China has announced its intention to increase the country’s computing power.
The Chinese leadership plans to increase this indicator of technological strength by more than a third in less than three years. Experts say that the implementation of this intention will benefit local suppliers. Also, as part of measures to achieve the goal, actions will be taken to strengthen China’s technological sovereignty. The increase in computing power is of strategic and critical importance for the country, since the US sanctions regime is currently exerting sensitive pressure on the local industry sector.
A joint statement by several Chinese departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, states that the world’s second-largest economy intends to increase the computing power in the technology industry by more than 300 exaflops from the current 220. China plans to achieve the goal by 2025.
According to experts, Beijing’s officially announced action plan in the technological sphere is the latest attempt to create a digital infrastructure that will become the basis for stimulating the development of the country’s economic system, which is in a difficult situation and requires additional efforts for growth.
Over the next two years, China intends to build another 20 intelligent computing centers. Local regulators have reported that larger optical networks and improved data warehouses will be installed by 2025. Additional computing power is a factor of beneficial impact on the manufacturing sector, the sphere of education, the financial system, transport area, healthcare, and energy.
Regulators said Beijing was seeking to strengthen synergies. China is also interested in protecting the supply chain by creating controlled solutions and developing a kind of system to encourage the use of local software. Regulators noted that the creation of high-tech infrastructure requires a high level of supply chain protection.
The United States has restricted Chinese companies’ access to advanced chips, including Nvidia products. These microcircuits are critical components for training artificial intelligence models. Beijing has also taken similar measures in response to this. China has restricted the export of germanium and gallium needed in the production of chips.
Under the conditions of external pressure, which has gradually developed into what can be described as a technological confrontation between the two largest economies in the world, Beijing is making efforts to introduce and scale local IT products, including operating systems and memory chips. In a sense, all of China’s current actions to ensure technological sovereignty are forced because, against the background of restrictive measures on the part of Washington, there are only two options left, among which are either lagging behind in development within the framework of the concept of humility with realities or activating its potential and competing at the global level. Beijing chose the second option, which is more than logical.
China is seeking a U.S.-free supply chain. Bejing has no other way out because otherwise technological development will either be delayed in time or actually canceled.
Chinese companies Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International have been blacklisted by the United States. These firms, as part of a joint effort, have achieved successes in the development of chips that have made the US question the effectiveness of its sanctions against China.
In the new flagship smartphone Huawei Mate 60 Pro, released this year, a 7-nanometer Kirin 9000s chip was discovered, indicating that the technological capabilities of the Asian country surpass the idea of this. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in September said there was no evidence of the ability of Chinese companies to establish mass production of advanced microcircuits. But in October, she noted at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that Huawei’s technological breakthrough was a concern. The media reported that this company, with the support of Taiwanese firms, is building factories for the production of microcircuits.
