Guizhou pioneers China's big data development

Located in Southwest China, Guizhou enjoys a temperate climate, with an average summer temperature of 23 C, which is ideal for keeping data servers cool and maintaining safe operations.

Boasting abundant water and coal, Guizhou can provide stable electricity supply and competitive rates for big data enterprises.

Taking the Guian New Area, the host site of Huawei's big data center with a planned accommodation capacity of 400,000 servers, as an example, it provides a discounted electricity rate of 0.35 yuan per 1 kilowatt-hour compared with 0.5 yuan per kWh in other areas.

"For data centers consuming more than 100 million kWh per year and with electricity fees accounting for 80 percent to 90 percent of their annual operation, it's a huge cost saving." Hu added.

Buoyed by supportive government policies, Guizhou has now attracted a number of heavyweight players, such as Apple, Qualcomm, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba and Foxconn to establish their cloud computing and big data centers.

Currently, Guizhou has 23 key data centers in operation or under construction in its capital city Guiyang, Guian New Area and Qianxinan Buoyei and Miao autonomous prefecture.

Moving forwards, Guizhou plans to have 4 million servers; and by 2022, the added value of the province's digital economy is estimated to account for 33 percent of its GDP.