Qingyang, a city in Gansu province, has made significant progress in developing a national data center cluster with strong backing from national ministries and the provincial government, Party Secretary Huang Zeyuan said during China's ongoing annual legislative sessions.

Gansu began building a national hub node for an integrated computing power network in late 2021 after receiving approval from the National Development and Reform Commission and three other ministries. As part of the initiative, the Qingyang National Data Center Cluster was established within the "Gansu hub."

By the end of last year, Qingyang had built 31,000 rack cabinets, reaching 51,000 petaflops of intelligent computing power at full utilization. That made it China's data cluster with the largest incremental expansion, fastest growth rate and highest proportion of intelligent computing nationwide, said Huang, who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress.

A computing capacity of 50,000 petaflops allows for processing about 50 trillion images per second or providing real-time road condition analysis for roughly 25 million vehicles simultaneously, experts previously told China News Agency.

The national data center currently supplies computing power for regions including Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei; the Yangtze River Delta; and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Huang said.

"A 400G optical transmission network has now been established, connecting major cities," he added.

Qingyang has partnered with nearly 4,000 enterprises in the digital economy sector, with 357 officially settling in the city. More than half of China's leading artificial intelligence firms have either launched projects in Qingyang or use its intelligent computing power, according to Huang.

Wu Kezheng, senior director of intelligent computing products at Capital Online Data Service Co, a Qingyang partner company, told the Qingyang Integrated Media Center: "The Qingyang government has a very clear plan for the development of this industry, which is an important reason why we chose Qingyang for our operations."

Qingyang is working to lower electricity prices to below 0.4 yuan per kilowatt-hour to further reduce costs for businesses, Huang said.

"By 2025, Qingyang will accelerate the construction of a national AI computing power hub, speed up the development of multiple 10,000-card clusters and achieve a total computing power scale of 100,000 petaflops," Mayor Zhou Jijun told China City News.

Fang Biling contributed to this story.