On August 28, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled the list for the construction of national computing power interconnection regional nodes, with 17 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) selected, including Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hubei, Guangdong, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, with Shaanxi among them.
At first glance, this might appear to be just another "national badge" added to the computing power sector, but when viewed over a longer timeline, its significance runs far deeper. Over the past few years, Shaanxi's development of computing power has primarily focused on answering the question of "whether it has its own computing centers here." This new round of national computing power interconnection construction, however, begins to address a different issue: with so much computing capacity nationwide, can it be discovered, invoked, traded, and dispatched across the board? This signals that competition in the computing industry is shifting from "who has built more data centers" to "who can effectively organize computing resources." For Shaanxi, the real point of interest is not just how many more data centers will be built, but whether it can leverage Xi'an's scientific research, industrial, and network foundations to position itself within a new northwestern computing division of labor system.
What Exactly Does This License Entail?
First, it's necessary to clarify a point that is often easily confused. Shaanxi was not selected for the "National Integrated Computing Power Network National Hub Nodes" this time; it was selected for the National Computing Power Interconnection Regional Nodes. These are two separate systems. The "East Data, West Computing" project, launched in 2022, established a spatial framework of "8 national computing hubs plus 10 national data center clusters." Regions such as Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Guizhou are all key carriers for national computing hubs. The National Development and Reform Commission has explicitly proposed developing low-cost, green data centers in these areas with favorable energy and climate conditions to handle non-real-time computing needs such as backend processing, offline analysis, and storage backup nationwide.
This national computing power interconnection node, however, is a different "network." A notice issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in February 2026 clarifies that the national computing power interconnection node system consists of "1 national computing internet service node + M regional nodes + N industry nodes." Of these, the "1" has already been established. The "M" refers to regional nodes built in areas with strong demand for computing power, while the "N" targets key industries. The primary task of the regional nodes is not simply to build another data center, but to establish a unified service platform that integrates functions such as computing resource aggregation, identity management, interconnected scheduling, operational monitoring, and security assurance. More critically, the state requires these nodes to operate under "unified identification, unified standards, and unified rules," enabling computing resources to genuinely enter the national market.
In other words, previously computing power was like a collection of isolated "islands"; now the construction of "highways" is beginning. The "Computing Power Interconnection Action Plan" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2025 further states that by 2028, standardized interconnection of public computing power nationwide should be basically achieved, gradually forming a computing internet capable of "intelligent perception, real-time discovery, and on-demand acquisition." Therefore, what Shaanxi has obtained this time is not computing project qualification in the ordinary sense, but a ticket into the national computing power circulation network.
Why Is Shaanxi Qualified to Enter?
Why was Shaanxi able to secure this entry ticket? The answer is likely more complex than simply "Shaanxi has advantages in computing power." This is because competition in the computing network arena is no longer solely about comparing electricity prices, rack counts, and PUE values. It increasingly resembles competition over transportation hubs of the past: just because a highway passes through a place doesn't mean it automatically becomes an economic center. What truly matters is: Are there enough goods? Are there enough destinations? Is there enough trade? Is there enough organizational capability as a hub? The same applies to computing power.
Shaanxi's greatest strength lies in its possession of all four conditions—"supply, demand, network, and industry." First, Shaanxi has a foundation for computing supply. Xi'an has developed multi-tiered computing infrastructure covering supercomputing and intelligent computing. In particular, the connection between the National Supercomputing Xi'an Center and the national supercomputing internet gives Xi'an a solid base for organizing computing in areas such as scientific computing, scientific intelligence, industrial simulation, and new materials R&D. Second, Shaanxi has enormous demand for computing. The density of universities, research institutes, and advanced manufacturing in Xi'an holds clear advantages in the Northwest. Compared to the "computing factories" of other western provinces such as Ningxia and Gansu, Xi'an more closely resembles a "computing application market."
Third, Shaanxi's energy abundance cannot be overlooked. It is a major national energy base, rich in coal, natural gas, wind power, and solar photovoltaic resources. In 2025, Shaanxi's annual external power transmission scale exceeded 100 billion kilowatt-hours for the first time, and during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, it added 37.2 million kilowatts of grid-connected wind and solar capacity. Shaanxi's "15th Five-Year Plan" goals clearly set a target of reaching 120 million kilowatts of renewable energy installed capacity by 2030, with non-fossil energy installations for in-province use accounting for about 60%. This means Shaanxi is not without a "green computing" advantage. Yulin is especially noteworthy here. Yulin simultaneously possesses coal, thermal power, wind and solar new energy, as well as an increasingly complete power grid system. From an industrial logic perspective, it is actually one of the regions in Shaanxi best positioned to host large-scale computing infrastructure.
Fourth, Shaanxi possesses network and industrial hub capabilities that are rare in the Northwest. Gansu has been continuously building high-speed backbone networks from Qingyang to cities like Xi'an, Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, and Chongqing, and has laid out backbone optical cables from Qingyang through Lanzhou and Yinchuan connecting to the western region. Within this landscape, Xi'an itself is an important network and industrial node. An interesting spatial relationship is thus taking shape: computing power from Qingyang and Zhongwei can converge toward Xi'an, while Xi'an's industrial and research demands can seek computing capacity from Qingyang and Zhongwei.
A "Third Role" Emerges
When discussing computing power in the Northwest, there are generally two main roles. One is the computing producer, represented by places like Qingyang and Zhongwei. The other is the energy supplier. In the past, many northwestern regions developed data centers based on the "East Data, West Computing" strategic layout, which addressed a resource allocation problem: the eastern region has a developed digital economy but high costs for land, energy, and data centers, while the western region has good conditions for energy, land, and climate but relatively insufficient local digital industry and computing demand. Thus, part of the computing demand was shifted from the east to the west.
However, in the AI era, the computing economy is undergoing change. AI training requires large-scale GPU clusters, while inference demands computing power closer to application endpoints; scientific research requires supercomputing; and industrial intelligence requires substantial heterogeneous computing. The distance and synergy between computing power and data, industry, models, and applications are becoming increasingly important. This means "cheap computing" is only the first layer of competition; how computing is discovered, dispatched, and matched to demand is becoming the second layer. Shaanxi's entry, and perhaps its biggest opportunity, lies in pursuing this alternative path in the second layer of competition. From an endowment perspective, Xi'an has industrial foundations in university research, military industry, aerospace, automotive, and semiconductors; Yulin has energy chemicals and new energy; and northern Shaanxi has the energy space to further host computing infrastructure. At the same time, Shaanxi is developing its artificial intelligence, big data, software, and information services industries.
Therefore, what truly deserves attention regarding Shaanxi's entry into the regional node is not just data center construction, but whether Shaanxi has the chance to become a key gateway for computing power trading and scheduling in the Northwest. Shaanxi is currently advancing projects such as the Silk Road Computing Trading (Scheduling) Platform and the Shaanxi Data Big Data Industrial Park. In August, Shaanxi Data Group, together with China Telecom Shaanxi, launched the "Smart Cloud Shaanxi TOKEN Supermarket" platform, attempting to provide integrated services for models, data, computing networks, and industry solutions. This can already be viewed as a "warm-up" before the construction of the regional node. Now, with its selection as a national regional node, Shaanxi finally has a mechanism to connect these "production-side" resources with the "demand side." Going forward, the question is whether Shaanxi can secure this "third role" in the northwestern computing landscape—transitioning from fragmented computing supply and demand markets to a "computing scheduling + industrial application" hub linking computing production bases like Gansu and Ningxia. This may be far more worthy of attention and anticipation than simply "obtaining a computing license."