China’s Inner Mongolia ramps up green computing, AI service exports

Overview

North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region stepped up its push into green computing last Saturday, signing 12 projects with a combined planned investment of 186.46 billion yuan (about $27.49 billion) and breaking ground on a platform aimed at taking Chinese AI services global. The signings took place at the 2026 Green Computing Power (AI) Conference in Hohhot, the regional capital.

The projects involve leading companies including Volcano Engine — ByteDance's cloud service platform — along with Cambricon Technologies and China Telecom, covering green intelligent computing centers, token factories, and manufacturing of computing-power and electricity equipment.

At the same conference, construction officially began on a comprehensive service platform for digital services going global, located in the Hohhot Area of the China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone. The platform will connect overseas developers with China's AI models and green computing resources while helping domestic AI companies expand overseas. It offers services including compliance assessment, computing-power scheduling, token measurement, cross-border settlement and developer support.

Scale of the region's computing build-out

Inner Mongolia is leveraging its abundant wind and solar resources to build a large-scale green computing base, according to local authorities. The Horinger New Area in Hohhot now has 62 computing centers with a total computing capacity of 150,000 petaflops, of which 143,000 petaflops is intelligent computing capacity. A petaflop equals one quadrillion calculations per second.

In neighboring Ulanqab, operational computing capacity has reached 172,000 petaflops, with intelligent computing accounting for more than 95% of it.

The push comes as China's demand for AI computing continues to surge. Official figures cited by Xinhua show daily token calls in China rose from about 100 billion in early 2024 to 140 trillion in March 2026.

Ulanqab's new data center campus

Envision Group has brought its Galaxy Campus online in Ulanqab, featuring a 120,000-square-metre data centre with capacity for up to one million AI accelerators and more than 2 gigawatts of planned power capacity. The petaflop totals from Hohhot and Ulanqab describe capacity that is already running; the 2 gigawatts at the Galaxy Campus is a plan. Envision has not named the accelerators going into the campus, nor its cost, buyers, or current power usage.

Hohhot's climate offers natural advantages for cooling giant server farms. The city has an average annual temperature of 7°C, with more than 200 days a year cool enough for direct outdoor air cooling, which cuts cooling costs by over 20%. Power in Hohhot runs at about 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour, a price at which a large GPU cluster can save roughly 50 million yuan per year. Hohhot's green electricity use is above 80%, with wind power reaching some sites through a dedicated 41-kilometre line rather than the public grid.

The economics of power are a major factor. China Mobile's Hohhot Intelligent Computing Center paid about 290 million yuan for electricity in 2025, accounting for more than 70% of its operating expenses.

State policy context

Beijing's push for green computing is part of a broader national strategy. China's 2021 policy, known as 'Eastern Data Western Computing', moved data-intensive work to the country's renewable-rich west. China has also mandated that data centres draw 80% of their power from renewable sources by the end of this decade, and provinces like Guizhou and Inner Mongolia have massively expanded solar and wind capacity to meet that demand.

These developments come as other regions wrestle with data centre growth. Meta left the RE100 pact this summer, a global corporate renewable-energy initiative. In Europe, grid issues have pushed 63% of new data centre capacity out of the five established markets. And American opposition has stalled about $130 billion of data centre projects in three months, prompting companies to launch a charm offensive.

Perspectives

Local impact and economic reality

While the computing build-out is celebrated as an engine for regional development, some researchers question how much of the benefit reaches ordinary residents. Guizhou, another western province home to major data centres, has averaged annual GDP growth of 7.4% over the past decade, but its wage growth over the same period was second to last nationwide, according to the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET). DSET researchers Cartus Bo-Xiang You and Angela Glowacki said the contrast suggests data centers' impact on local per capita income is limited. Andrew Stokols of Singapore Management University echoed that view, saying data centres may not create a huge spillover effect on local jobs.

Local residents in Guizhou's data centre hub offered a more positive picture. Shopkeeper Shu Peihua told AFP that the area used to be a barren mountain, but transportation and business opportunities have improved. A vendor selling savoury pancakes said there were two new universities since the facilities went up. Resident Li Xixiu said the centres brought the main road and enabled villagers to find jobs nearby.

The financial strain of the build-out is also visible in Guizhou, which ranked 30th among Chinese provinces for debt-to-revenue ratio and 27th for debt-to-GDP in 2024, according to DSET.

Energy integration and grid management

Renewable energy overproduction, known as curtailment, has become a problem in regions with surging solar and wind capacity. But server farms can help absorb that surplus, according to Simeng Deng, senior analyst at Rystad Energy. The company's analysis suggests data centres could act as flexible consumers that smooth the load on grids increasingly reliant on intermittent renewables.

Beijing started taxing solar batteries this year, the first time in a decade, a move that could affect the economics of renewable-powered data centres. Huawei has built its largest data centre in Guizhou, a cluster of European-style buildings with a clock tower and multi-arched bridge, and Apple and Tencent also have data centre sites there. China Telecom bought Huawei Kunpeng servers in a $1.7 billion deal in June.