China has surged forward in scientific and technological prowess despite facing stringent sanctions from the United States. According to the latest collaborative report by IDC, IEIT Systems, and the Tsinghua Institute for Global Industry titled “The 2022-2023 Global Computing Index,” China has made a leap within a year, positioning itself as a formidable contender in the global technological landscape.
In defiance of the formidable technological sanctions imposed by the United States, China achieved the following feats:
- Data Center Expansion: China expanded its data center infrastructure by an astounding 29%, increasing the number of data center racks in the country from 5.9 million units to an impressive 7.6 million.
- Enhanced Computing Power: The nation elevated its computing power by a substantial 31%, surging from 150 Exaflops to a formidable 197 Exaflops. (To put this into perspective, 1 Exaflops equals 10^18 or a quintillion floating point operations per second.)
- AI Development: China intensified its commitment to AI development, augmenting computing power dedicated to this sector by a staggering 45%. Currently, AI development accounts for 25% of the nation’s total computing power.
- Expanded Storage Capacity: The country bolstered its storage system capacity by an impressive 23%, soaring from 878 Exabytes to a commanding 1080 Exabytes. (An Exabyte equals 10^18 or a quintillion bytes.)
These growth rates have propelled China to the cusp of matching the scientific and technological prowess of the United States, the current global leader in this domain.
Notable achievements in 2022 include:
- China’s computing industry alone boasted a scale of ¥1.8 trillion, equivalent to $247 billion USD. Plans for 2025 project a staggering ¥4.4 trillion (yuan), or $613 billion USD.
- The scale of computing resources across all sectors of the Chinese economy reached a staggering ¥9.8 trillion (yuan), equivalent to a remarkable $1.4 trillion USD. Future projections for 2025 anticipate an even more astonishing ¥24 trillion (yuan) or $3.34 trillion USD.
- Every yuan invested in augmenting computing power has a transformative effect on China’s gross domestic product, contributing an impressive 3-4 yuan (41-55 US cents) to economic output.
- An impressive 41% of China’s economic output now derives from the digital economy, underscoring the nation’s rapid digital transformation.
Commenting on these compelling statistics during the recent China Computing Power conference, Jin Zhuanglong, the head of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, emphasized, “Computing power is now the cornerstone of digitalization.” This sentiment aligns seamlessly with the adage coined two years ago: “If you have the hardware, take part in the race; without ‘hardware,’ you’ll remain on the sidelines.”
Readers can compare this year’s achievements with the previous year’s data in the post titled “World ranking of the scientific and technological power of states in 2022.” It elucidates why, in the era of the second scientific and technological revolution marked by the total digitization of the world, a nation’s computing power stands as the linchpin of its scientific and technological might. The economic rationale for this transformation can be explored further in the work of Professor Jakub Growiec from the Warsaw School of Economics, titled “What Will Drive Long-Run Growth in the Digital Age?“
