Zhou Chengxiong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology Strategy Consulting, used a Huanqiu.com opinion piece to present the Ulanqab computing hub in Inner Mongolia as an example of ‘East Data, West Computing’. The figures are the author's and have not been independently verified.
According to the Huanqiu.com piece, Ulanqab, once known as China's potato capital, now hosts firms such as Huawei, Alibaba and ByteDance. Zhou wrote that cumulative contracted standard racks exceed 7 million and that intelligent computing makes up over 95% of capacity. He also said Goldman Sachs had called it one of the largest and fastest-growing AI clusters in Asia-Pacific, but we could not confirm the original assessment.
광고 문의 · 300×250Power, climate and network
The article says Ulanqab is about 240 km from Beijing with a fiber round-trip latency of about 4.2 ms, and that its average annual temperature of 4.3 C reduces cooling energy. A green power direct-connect project that integrates generation, grid, load and storage reportedly self-consumes about 848 million kWh a year.
Zhou stressed a virtuous cycle in which cheap green power lowers costs, attracts companies, lifts utilization and justifies more investment. He described the approach as letting absorption set supply and expanding as demand requires, rather than building first and looking for tenants. The aim is to run model training, inference and data services locally, not merely to host servers.
A regional model and open questions
The author expects equipment manufacturing, data labeling and operations to create jobs, and sees cold climates, deserts and Gobi land as a base for solar, wind, data centers and green hydrogen. He presents the case as a shift from eastern concentration to east-west coordination and from scale to green, value-driven growth. Ulanqab has drawn up a 2026-2028 three-year action plan and an ‘AI+’ plan.
Zhou also flagged risks: avoiding low-level duplicate construction, proving that direct green-power links remain stable at scale, and building local talent, applications and a software ecosystem. His stated goal is an ‘industrial highland’ rather than a ‘data warehouse’. The piece is an opinion article that reflects a Chinese media viewpoint; some observers abroad say power and water burdens and returns on investment also deserve scrutiny.