From a hard-to-develop mountainous region to China's new data valley: Guizhou's data-center push

Guizhou, a mountainous province in southern China that long sat outside the scope of large-scale industrial investment, is now home to about 50 data centers that are either operating or under construction by technology groups including Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, China Mobile, and global players such as Apple.

Local authorities and international media have pointed to Guizhou’s cool year-round climate and relatively low energy costs as key factors behind the investment. In the AI era, data has become critical infrastructure, and Guizhou is gradually shifting from a hard-to-develop mountain region into what is increasingly described as China’s “new data valley.”

National strategy and the “East data, West computing” push

Guizhou’s rise is closely tied to China’s broader national data and computing initiatives. Since 2022, China has implemented a national big-data system project comprising eight national computing centers and ten clusters of large-scale data centers, with Guizhou identified as a key hub.

China is also promoting the “East data, West computing” policy, which aims to move data processing from eastern cities to western regions with more favorable climate and energy resources. Under the approach, data generated in major eastern economic and technology hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong is transferred to western areas for processing and storage.

Climate and energy costs: “free cooling” and cheaper power

Guizhou’s natural conditions are a major selling point for data-center operators. The province’s average temperature stays around 20°C year-round, including in summer, reducing the cooling burden that data centers face to maintain server performance.

An official described the environment as a “free cooling system,” which helps companies lower electricity costs—one of the largest operating expenses for digital infrastructure.

Even the mountainous terrain is being leveraged. Companies have converted natural caverns into data-center “vaults.” Tencent, the operator of WeChat, has used this model in Guiyang, covering up to 470,000 square meters and housing about 300,000 servers.

Electricity pricing is another decisive factor. With abundant hydropower and coal resources, Guizhou can supply electricity at about 0.35 yuan per kWh, compared with around 0.5 yuan per kWh elsewhere in China.

Examples of investment and operating savings

Since 2017, Apple has invested about $1 billion to build a data center in Guizhou. The facility stores and processes all user data in China, including data from iCloud services. The center is not fully operated by Apple directly; instead, it is run through a local partner, Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), a company owned by the Guizhou provincial government.

On the cost side, Huawei’s data center in Gui’an (Guizhou) is estimated to save about 1.1 billion kWh of electricity per year. The resulting savings are described as equivalent to hundreds of millions to billions of yuan depending on the operating phase.

Scale-up in computing capacity

Beyond storage, Guizhou is positioning itself as a computing center for the AI era. As of last year, total investment in related fields exceeded 22 billion yuan (about $3.2 billion), supporting expansion of large-scale computing capacity.

As a result, Guizhou’s computing power stands at about 150 exaflop today, up more than 300% in a single year.