China's digital economy drive propels cloud computing market growth

BEIJING - With a click of a mouse or a touch on a smartphone screen, one can navigate the miraculous mountains seen in the movie "Avatar" amid sweet birdsong and light-hearted music, and feel like you are flying over the unique landscape just like the movie's protagonist Na'vi.

This immersive experience is open to anyone who can visit the online Planet Zhangjiajie, a metaverse project that enables a lifelike exploration of the scenic sights in Central China's Hunan province by way of extended reality technologies.

Sophisticated effects rendering and smooth scene flows on consumer terminals like smartphones and laptops are partly empowered by cloud computing services provided by Cloudsky, a start-up in end-to-end advanced computing infrastructure and services.

"Computational power is like electricity and petroleum for the digital economy, empowering the speedy development of various digital applications," said Crusoe Mao, founder and chairman of Cloudsky.

Mao is a veteran professional in digital technology who previously spent years working in Silicon Valley. "I believe the cloud computing market is as broad as the sky, especially in China," Mao said.

In 2022, China's cloud computing market volume expanded 40.91 percent year-on-year to reach 455 billion yuan ($63.37 billion), much faster than the global growth rate of 19 percent, and it might top one trillion yuan in 2025, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

China has the world's second-largest scale in terms of computing power, which touched 197 EFLOPS by September 2023, while the country's cloud computing infrastructure has also been improving quickly.

Official data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) showed that by the end of September, the number of standard racks in use in China's data centers had exceeded 7.6 million units, and the scale of intelligent computational power had increased by 45 percent year-on-year.

In early October, the Chinese government unveiled an action plan to boost computational power infrastructure development, outlining targets to be achieved by 2025 in fields like network power, storage power and industrial empowerment.

"China's specific application of computing power has achieved initial results," said MIIT chief engineer Zhao Zhiguo, adding that real-time computing services such as intelligent driving, financial technology, and virtual reality are widely used, while some regions have successfully built a number of computing applications with local characteristics around cloud services, film and television animation rendering.

In addition to policy support and top-level design, the unique appeal of China's cloud computing market also comes from the country's solid telecom and internet coverage, which enables smooth and convenient operation of various cloud computing services on consumer terminals, Mao observed.

As of the end of September, China had 3.189 million 5G base stations, covering all the urban areas of prefecture-level and county-level cities. Every 10,000 Chinese residents now share about 22.6 5G base stations, giving rise to a variety of computing power scenario demands.

To advance the cloud computing industry, China will enhance the connectivity of various computing power infrastructures, accelerate breakthroughs in a number of iconic technology products and solutions, and promote the integrated development of computing power and traditional industries, according to Zhao.

Cloudsky has partnered with Chinese cloud service providers and internet firms to explore the huge potential of customized cloud computing services, and plans to further invest in related technologies and expand service scenarios in fields like education and agriculture.

"There are just so many market opportunities to be tapped here in China," Mao said.