China is continuing to expand access to AI computing power to its workforce, and has begun using its nationalized data centers to do so. Many of China's local governments have begun rolling out "computing power voucher" programs, aimed at helping SMEs (small and medium enterprises) access AI training power at heavily subsidized costs.
The voucher program has so far been seen in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Henan, Shandong, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Ningbo. These cities have begun distributing vouchers for computing power and AI training, allowing SMEs to purchase these computing tasks from local data centers for far below typical costs.
Shanghai's investment leads the rest of China's cities, reportedly allocating CN¥600 million ($84.1 million / £62.9 million) to computing power vouchers. Shanghai's vouchers will subsidize up to 80% of AI rental fees for its users. Shanghai has also rolled out CN¥100 million ($14.0 million / £10.5 million) in funding for a comparable data voucher program specifically for AI LLM training.
The pilot region for vouchers, Chengdu, has recently expanded its program that began in 2023, now pledging CN¥100 million in voucher aid for research institutions. Shandong has dedicated CN¥30 million to its voucher program, with a further CN¥1 billion on the way to boost its local AI infrastructure. The Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area and Henan Province have both released their early plans for voucher programs of their own, with Beijing also now starting to receive applications for its vouchers.
The voucher plan was first introduced in China in December 2024, when China's National Development and Reform Commission, along with other national ministries, released a policy entitled "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Data Labeling Industry". The doctrine introduces vouchers as a means to lower R&D costs for smaller firms, as well as to make the most of China's quickly expanding data center footprint.
China has been rapidly growing its number of data centers. The recent building boom has produced hundreds of data centers across the country, with its "Eastern Data, Western Computing" strategy filling the western parts of China with data centers for cheaper power to then be utilized by the needs of China's eastern coastal industries. The growth has perhaps outpaced demand, with some data centers sitting at only 20%-30% load in the wake of rapid expansion.
The voucher program is paired with China's recently announced goals to develop a unified, nation-spanning network of high-power compute, spreading the load of all of the nation's various data centers. This plan, per China's AI doctrine, will play a crucial part in maximizing the utilization of its empty data centers, and should play nicely with the localized voucher plan, which is also continuing to expand across more and more Chinese local governments.
Optimistic and pessimistic views of the computing power voucher programs will draw very different conclusions about their intent and outlook. Whether or not China will be able to make the most of its vast data center network is impossible to foretell, but the country seems dead-set on continuing expansion. The nation recently made big news with the announcement of intentions to equip 39 new data centers with 115,000 illegal Nvidia Hopper GPUs, raising a great many logistical and legal questions.
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