Insights from Ulanqab's Green Computing Development: The Methodology of Adapting to Local Conditions (Innovation Talk)

On October 16, during an inspection tour in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that China has a vast territory, and the resource endowments of the east, west, south, north and center differ markedly. On the new journey, all regions should, in accordance with the strategic decisions and planning arrangements of the Party Central Committee, establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, fully, accurately and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy, keep pace with the trends of the times, seize development opportunities, base themselves on their own conditions, give play to their comparative advantages, and promote high-quality development in light of local conditions.

Ulanqab is rich in wind and solar resources. In recent years, it has given play to comparative advantages such as green electricity, climate and location, and achieved positive results in the development of the green computing power industry. Up to now, Ulanqab has signed more than 100 data center projects, put 172,000 P of computing power into operation (10 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), with intelligent computing accounting for more than 95%, making it a "highland" in the country's computing power industry.

Ulanqab has unique advantages in developing green computing power. In terms of climate, Ulanqab has an average annual temperature of 4.3 degrees Celsius, and natural cooling sources can be used for nearly 10 months of the year, saving 20% to 30% of energy under the same technical conditions; in terms of location, Ulanqab is close to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, with low network latency and good conditions for undertaking industrial transfer; in terms of electricity, Ulanqab is rich in wind and solar resources and has a high proportion of green electricity, providing a low-cost, low-carbon energy supply... These "family assets" make Ulanqab a preferred place for laying out large and super-large data centers.

However, from the supply of every kilowatt-hour of green electricity to the output of every token, industrial development cannot simply "rely on the heavens for food." Judging from Ulanqab's practice in developing green computing power, a very enlightening experience is to persist in adapting to local conditions, not blindly follow trends, not divorce oneself from endowments, and take the path of transforming natural advantages into industrial advantages and upgrading the original "family assets" into new momentum.

In developing green computing power, Ulanqab does not focus only on buying servers and building computer rooms, but sets its sights on measures that lay the foundation and benefit the long term, such as promoting the coordination of computing and electricity and connecting the "source, grid, load and storage." For example, Ulanqab has laid out and built a number of green electricity direct-connection projects for data centers, while advancing reform of the electricity pricing mechanism, with the household electricity price for data centers at 0.32 to 0.38 yuan per kilowatt-hour. Surging green electricity and sensitive market price signals have become the confidence for the development of the local green computing power industry, and have also provided replicable and promotable experience for other regions. For another example, Ulanqab has built a 144-core dual-route dedicated optical cable directly to Beijing, compressing a physical distance of about 240 kilometers into a communication latency of 4.2 milliseconds, allowing data to run faster and connections to be more stable, and effectively converting location advantages into advantages in the computing power industry.

In developing green computing power, Ulanqab has also not ignored or abandoned other industries. Green electricity traceability and mechanisms for quantifying the value of green electricity, developed on the basis of the green computing power industry, have allowed traditional industries such as ferroalloys to simultaneously enjoy institutional dividends, with the proportion of green electricity used in newly started projects reaching 60%; wind turbine and photovoltaic equipment, energy storage, green hydrogen and other industries derived from green electricity have lengthened and expanded the new energy industry chain; a full-chain digital system integrating intelligent planting and smart logistics has taken root in industries such as potatoes and oats, greatly increasing the added value of products... Supported and driven by green computing power, new quality productive forces led by scientific and technological innovation and underpinned by green and low-carbon development have injected new momentum into local industries.

In developing green computing power, Ulanqab also focuses on chain clustering, ecological coordination and value enhancement. Digital rendering, intelligent creativity and other fields have driven the growth and expansion of diverse business forms; jobs such as customer service marketing, data annotation and data center operation and maintenance have opened up new space for employment; the "tentacles" of artificial intelligence have extended into all aspects of medical services and social governance, bringing convenience to people's lives... Green computing power has moved from being "built well" to being "used well," and from "selling computing power" to exploring "selling effective computing power output," driving profound changes in the mode of economic and social development.

Looking from Ulanqab to the whole country, the "East Data, West Computing" project has laid out eight national computing power hub nodes and 10 national data center clusters. Various regions, relying on their own resource endowments, have embarked on new paths of development—Guizhou has become the country's first comprehensive big data pilot zone, Gansu is promoting cross-border computing power trade, and Ningxia is building a "token factory"... The practices of these regions likewise show that new quality productive forces are not something only big cities and science and technology innovation centers can develop. The key is to accurately identify one's most prominent comparative advantages, while making good use of scientific and technological empowerment, actively aligning with national strategies, and building industries suitable for local development, so as to avoid homogeneous competition.

General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that "adapting to local conditions is in essence seeking truth from facts," and required "accurately identifying one's strategic positioning in the overall national situation." This is an important methodology for doing economic work well, and also one of the deep logics for playing the "national chess game" well.

In the opening year of the "15th Five-Year Plan," all regions should give play to their comparative advantages, strive to display their respective strengths, embark on a path of high-quality development suited to their local realities, and promote the steady and sustained advancement of Chinese-style modernization.