An engineer checks power at a cloud computing center in Xiangyang, Central China's Hubei Province, in November. Photo: VCG

The Biden administration is planning to restrict Chinese companies' accessing of US' cloud computing service in a bid to curb China's AI development, US media reported. Chinese experts said the move, aimed at pressuring China's tech growth, may fail since China's own cloud computing is already well developed. 

The alleged new restrictions may requires US cloud computing providers such as Amazon and Microsoft to gain government permission before providing service to Chinese clients, in order to prevent Chinese AI companies "gaining technologies" through bypassing US government's export controls, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Even though the US government has banned the export of advanced chips including the Nvidia A100, a US researcher said Chinese company can access the chip from any cloud computing services provider, the Wall Street Journal report said. 

The Biden administration's move to curb China's AI industry development by restricting access of cloud computing might not be very effective, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance, told the Global Times, noting that the alleged move indicates that the US' technology suppression on China is heading "in an extreme direction". 

International Data Corporation's data showed that by the end of 2022, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, China Telecom and Amazon are the top five cloud computing companies, and the first four companies take over 64 percent of the market share and the Amazon accounts for 8.6 percent. 

"Leading tech companies in China have taken the majority of domestic cloud computing market, which have phased in a relatively established ecosystem, while American companies including Amazon and Microsoft only hold a relatively small market share," said Xiang.

In the first five months of 2023, the revenue of China's cloud computing and big data services reached 436.6 billion yuan, up 16.9 percent year-on-year, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on June 26. Chinese iiMedia Research predicted that the market size of Chinese cloud computing services may reach 378.5 million yuan in 2023. 

Global Times