Data. Photo: VCG

China will strengthen supervision on data center construction to avoid their unchecked and disorderly development, according to a plan for green and high-quality development of data centers and 5G, which is released by the China's top market regulator and three other government agencies on Wednesday.

According to the plan, China will optimize data center construction layout, and new large and mega data centers should be built within designated national data center clusters. Authorities will support centers currently located in East China with non-real-time arithmetic demand including back-end processing and storage back-up to be relocated to the country's western regions which typically have better access to wind and photovoltaic resources and suitable climate. 

In principle, local governments should not grant preferential policies on land and property tax for new data centers built outside of designated national nodes. At the same time, localities are asked to step up their efforts to coordinate and guide the construction of data centers, in a bid to avoid the unchecked development of data centers. 

In addition, the country will accelerate the construction of green data centers. 

The government plan also encourages the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy to enhance green power usage in data centers. Authorities will support energy-rich areas in West China to develop data-related industries including data processing, data cleaning and data content services to achieve low-carbon green development of the data centers.

According to the plan, by 2025, the average power utilization efficiency of new large and super-large data centers nationwide will be reduced to 1.3 percent, and the green low-carbon level will reach 4A or above.

The overall utilization of national data centers will be significantly improved, with the utilization of data centers in West China increasing from 30 percent to more than 50 percent, in tandem with the massive rollout of ultrafast 5G facilities.

From 2015 onwards, China has stepped up efforts to increase governance framework for data management, setting up more than 10 data exchanges in multiple provinces, including Beijing and Southwest China's Guizhou Province. On November 25, Shanghai Data Exchange officially kicked off trading, following the country's application to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement.

Global Times