Tencent builds giant bomb shelter in remote Chinese province Guizhou to house WeChat data

Many large technology companies – including Tencent, Alibaba, Foxconn and Apple – have shown strong support for Beijing’s goal to turn Guizhou province into a world-class hi-tech location

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The Guian Seven Stars Data Centre complex, the largest data centre facility of internet giant Tencent Holdings, is now under construction in Southwest China's mountainous Guizhou province. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:30am, 1 May 2018Updated: 3:30pm, 2 May 2018

Guizhou, a mountainous landlocked province in southwestern China, may have been dealt a poor hand with its topography, compared with the country’s economically vibrant coastal provinces where many industries are located.

But in a curious twist, that mountainous terrain is now helping put Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces, on the path to prosperity.

Major technology companies have made the province their prime location for vast new data centres to store, process and manage the prodigious amounts of information created by the digital revolution, social media, e-commerce, gaming, video streaming and all the online traffic from more than a billion WeChat users.

Will big data dreams of China's poorest province pay off?

Tencent Holdings, Asia’s most valuable public company, already has construction underway for its largest such facility – the Guian Seven Stars Data Centre complex – at a new internet development zone and urban district in Guizhou.

An artist’s rendering of the Guian Seven Stars Data Centre complex in Guizhou province that is now under construction. Once completed, it will be internet giant Tencent Holdings’ largest data centre. Photo: Handout

Shenzhen-based Tencent has taken on the arduous challenge of building the complex on a 51-hectare site, which included more than 30,000 square metres of tunnelled areas inside a 100-metre-high hill.

Five cavelike entrances, each measuring about 15 metres high and divided into two floors each, were bored on one side of a hill, according to a footage that was recently broadcast by state media China Central Television (CCTV). The huge cavern create inside will house tens of thousands of servers for Tencent’s data.

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