China amps up calls for ‘unified’ computing network to empower e-commerce and underpin AI

Boosting computational power is critical to China’s new infrastructure drive, and leaders want network access to be as common as water and electricity utilities

Expanded computer networks could help China develop semiconductor chips, process e-payments and better harness artificial intelligence such as chatbots

Reading Time:3 minutes

Only about three-quarters of China’s population has internet access, while others lack access to computers or software, especially in rural areas. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 8:00pm, 5 Dec 2023Updated: 8:09pm, 5 Dec 2023

A Communist Party mouthpiece is calling for the creation of a unified network of computing hardware that would span the entire country and make the utility as accessible and ubiquitous as water or electricity while supercharging the world’s second-largest digital economy.

Such a boost to computing power – a key consideration in China’s new infrastructure drive – would allow more people and businesses to use digital services, People’s Daily said in a commentary on Tuesday.

And in turn, it said, thousands of industries would be able to “provide better solutions for high-quality economic and social development”.

“By connecting large and small power resources across the country to form a unified dispatched computing power network, computing power can be connected … and used immediately, like water and electricity,” it added.

Government officials aim to link up existing hardware from supercomputing centres to private office-based systems so users can do more computations, including in the cloud, analysts believe.