First, let me ask you two questions:
1. Which province has the largest scale of intelligent computing power in China?
2. Which province has the largest number of standard racks in use in China?
I won't keep you in suspense. The answer to both questions is the same—Hebei.
Indeed, when many people mention computing power, they think of western or northern provinces like Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, and Heilongjiang. However, in reality, Hebei, located in North China, is the "hidden champion" of computing power in China.
According to the latest "2026 Comprehensive Computing Power Panorama Analysis" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Hebei Province's in-use intelligent computing power scale reaches up to 556.1 EFLOPS (accounting for about 25.4% of the national total), with 2.504 million standard racks in use, both ranking first in the country. According to the "Comprehensive Computing Power Index" report, Hebei's comprehensive computing power index has ranked first nationwide for two consecutive years in 2024 and 2025.
Why does a northern province long represented by steel and heavy industry have so much computing power? Who exactly is using this computing power? What advantages does Hebei have in developing computing power?
In today's article, Xiao Zao Jun will provide an in-depth analysis for everyone.
█ Absorbing Spillover Computing Power from the Capital to Perfectly Leverage Location Advantages
As is well known, computing power is the "water, electricity, and coal" of the digital era. The training and inference of AI large models, as well as the operation of various digital systems, are inseparable from it. Whoever masters computing power holds the ticket to artificial intelligence.
Computing power consumption is closely related to the economy and industry. As the capital, Beijing has a permanent population of over 21.8 million, a large number of government agencies, and the most densely concentrated internet enterprises, financial institutions, and research institutions in the country, resulting in extremely strong demand for computing power.
However, Beijing faces tight land resources and high pressure on power supply. Moreover, considering energy conservation, emission reduction, and the relief of non-capital functions, it is difficult to build new data centers on a large scale, especially AI Data Centers (AIDC) with huge energy consumption.
Therefore, Hebei, which is adjacent to Beijing, has become the best choice to absorb the spillover of this huge computing power demand.
In the national integrated computing power network "East Data, West Computing" project, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is one of the eight national computing power hub nodes. In February 2022, the construction of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hub node was officially launched. As the core bearing area of this hub, Hebei has made comprehensive efforts and quickly built a computing power service circle around Beijing.
The primary competitiveness of Hebei's computing power is latency.
Many computing power applications, such as model inference, financial trading, smart government affairs, and real-time interaction, have very high requirements for latency. Other problems are easy to solve, but latency, as a physical indicator limited by the speed of light and transmission distance, is a hard threshold.
Hebei is extremely close to Beijing, with obvious location advantages, and network latency can be controlled within an extremely low range.
Taking Langfang as an example, in recent years, Langfang has established ultra-low latency optical fiber links directly connected to Beijing's core nodes, with one-way latency as low as 0.33 milliseconds, and the overall response speed of data centers is less than 1 millisecond. This fully realizes real-time interaction at the same-city level for "Beijing-Langfang" data. In terms of latency experience, there is almost no difference from local computing power in Beijing.
In order to achieve "ultra-fast flow" in computing power transmission, Hebei has also put a lot of effort into the optical fiber backbone network.
They have coordinated the planning of the 400G all-optical transmission network across Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei, and built multiple new direct optical fiber routes around Beijing. The latency from the Langfang computing power cluster to the Beijing computing power platform is controlled within 2 milliseconds, building a 3-millisecond latency circle for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and a 20-millisecond latency circle for the whole country. The total length of optical cable lines in Hebei Province has cumulatively reached 2.953 million kilometers.
Hebei has also built dedicated channels for international internet data in Xiong'an and Zhangjiakou, serving enterprises in taking their large models global and conducting cross-border digital business. The inter-provincial exit bandwidth of the internet in Hebei has cumulatively reached 112,600 Gbps.
Langfang and Zhangjiakou rank first and second in the country, respectively, in the urban computing power sub-index.
Both cities are benchmarks for computing power clusters that Hebei focuses on building. Their characteristics are very distinct: Langfang focuses on "proximity," serving Beijing's businesses with high real-time requirements through ultra-low latency; Zhangjiakou focuses on "green," relying on abundant renewable energy to provide low-cost, low-carbon power guarantees for large-scale intelligent computing centers.
Hebei's green power is actually very strong, serving as the core supply area for green power in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. According to official data, as of June 2026, the cumulative grid-connected renewable energy in Hebei Province reached 156.859 million kilowatts, accounting for 73.6% of the province's total installed capacity.
As the only national-level renewable energy demonstration zone in the country, Zhangjiakou generates over 70 billion kWh of renewable energy annually. In 2025, the computing power centers in Zhangjiakou consumed 9.543 billion kWh of electricity, ranking first among the eight major hub nodes nationwide, of which over 5 billion kWh was green power, and multiple projects achieved 100% green power supply.
Coupled with Zhangjiakou's unique geographical location (the transition zone between the North China Plain and the Inner Mongolia Plateau) and cool climate, it has obvious advantages in natural cold sources, which can significantly reduce the energy consumption of air conditioning in machine rooms.
This combination of "natural cooling + green power drive" has brought the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of data centers in Zhangjiakou generally down to below 1.25, with some advanced projects even reaching 1.15, significantly better than the national average.
█ Numerous Data Center Landing Cases Demonstrate Strong Computing Power
We have just understood some macro data. Next, we might as well look at a few representative projects.
Let's first take a look at the China Unicom North China (Langfang) Data Center.
This data center is one of the "5 major" core nodes in China Unicom's national "5+4" strategy. It is positioned as an integrated training and inference hub and the main base for supplying large-granularity resources around Beijing.
The base has been in mature operation for over ten years, meeting the National Class A standard. It is not only equipped with top-tier basic supporting equipment and facilities but also possesses financial-grade power supply guarantees with self-built 110kV substations and dual-circuit power supply. The electromechanical systems have the conditions for flexible customization on demand, with great space for subsequent expansion, and sufficient reserves of power and land.
Currently, the base has put into operation 6 machine room buildings, 1 operation and maintenance building, and 1 110kV substation, with a total of 18,600 racks. This year, the electromechanical construction of DC16 was launched, and 3 new intelligent computing machine room buildings are being built. After completion, the intelligent computing power will increase several times.
China Unicom also has a park in Huailai County, Zhangjiakou City, which plans to build 8 machine room buildings, 2 operation and maintenance buildings, and 2 110kV power stations. The designed IT power is 244MW, capable of carrying nearly 100,000 standard racks and a computing power scale of 18 EFLOPS.
Currently, the Huailai park has put into operation 5 machine room buildings, 1 operation and maintenance building, and 1 110kV substation.
According to the plan, Hebei Unicom intends to rely on the two core computing power agglomeration areas of Huailai and Langfang to build a "2+3+N (2 central clusters, 3 provincial core machine rooms, N municipal edge nodes)" layout. The total scale of data center racks of Hebei Unicom across the province has reached 47,200 racks.
Let's take a look at China Telecom's projects.
Located in Huailai, the Huailai Park of China Telecom's Smart Cloud Base is one of the largest intelligent computing centers in Hebei Province. The total investment in the park is CNY 3.2 billion, with an IT capacity of 150MW, mainly undertaking Tianyi Cloud and intelligent computing businesses in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
Currently, the first phase of the park has been completed, including 2 standardized data centers, 1 power center, and 1 smart cloud comprehensive dispatch center, with 3,600 high-power racks installed. The second phase of the project started construction in April this year.
Hebei Telecom, based on the Huailai, Zhangbei, and Gaoyang parks, is building computing power clusters with outstanding advantages and complementary functions. The three major AIDC industrial clusters, according to the "two highs and two flexibilities" standard of high power density, high computing power output, flexible construction, and flexible expansion, have a total planned computing power service capacity of over 800MW.
China Mobile's case is in the provincial capital, Shijiazhuang.
The China Mobile Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Shijiazhuang) Data Center is one of China Mobile's three major regional data centers and a node in the North China region. It is designed and built according to the National Class A standard. Five specialized computing power machine rooms and 3 supporting power centers form a dual-core architecture, providing government and enterprise customers with high-capacity, highly stable, and scalable one-stop computing power hosting services.
This data center is planned and designed to carry 18,000 racks at full load. The currently completed first phase includes 2 data center buildings and 1 power center building, with 7,200 racks fully put into operation.
The center has undertaken the computing power businesses of over 60 provincial departments and bureaus, including the computing power services for the medical security system of 75 million residents under the Provincial Healthcare Security Administration.
China Mobile focuses on deploying five major core hubs in Shijiazhuang, Baoding, Langfang, Zhangjiakou, and Xiong'an. The province has planned 80,000 racks, of which 33,600 have been delivered, and has built 1,907 PFLOPS of intelligent computing power.
Let's look at two non-operator projects.
First is Chindata Group. This company is a leading computing power enterprise cultivated locally in Langfang and has laid out 9 AIDC intelligent computing industrial parks globally.
Among them, the Chindata (Langfang) International Information Port has put into operation 8 Internet Data Center (IDC) buildings and 4 AIDC buildings, with a leading scale of computing power infrastructure nationwide. The total investment in the first phase of the Chindata Artificial Intelligence Application Center is CNY 21.8 billion, which can support 100,000 PFLOPS of intelligent computing power after completion.
Then there is Zhongding Cloud. The Zhongding Cloud large-scale intelligent computing industrial project is also located in Langfang, specifically in Wanzhuang Town, Guangyang District.
The project is expected to have a total investment of CNY 26.2 billion and a total footprint of about 910 mu. The first phase has an investment of CNY 3 billion, covering 92.9 mu, and plans to build 4 standard intelligent computing center buildings and 1 110kV substation, 100% matching the deployment of domestically produced IT equipment.
As the first large-scale zero-carbon intelligent computing industrial project in Langfang, Zhongding Cloud has signed an energy management contract for a 100-megawatt photovoltaic green power direct connection project with State Power Investment Corporation Hebei Electric Power Co., Ltd., and it is one of the first 31 green power direct connection projects in the province.
I forgot to mention earlier that among the top 10 computing power service providers in China, 7 have deeply deployed in Langfang. The city has put into operation 36 large data centers, with an intelligent computing supply capacity of over 200,000 PFLOPS. This domestic No. 1 is indeed well-deserved.
Speaking of Hebei, everyone might ask about Xiong'an. As a national-level new area, the Xiong'an New Area is also at the forefront of computing power infrastructure construction.
Located on the east side of Yuerong Park, the Xiong'an Urban Computing Center, also known as the "Eye of Xiong'an," is the "super brain" and core digital infrastructure of the digital twin city in Xiong'an New Area, as well as the hub of the "one center and four systems" smart city architecture in Xiong'an New Area.
This data center has a total construction area of about 39,000 square meters. It adopts the country's first large-span column-free IDC machine room, a landscape-style concealed layout, and modular container machine room design, which is highly distinctive.
The center provides all types of computing power, including general computing, intelligent computing, and supercomputing. It covers five major business sectors: government affairs, relocated central state-owned enterprises, internet, small and medium-sized enterprises, and finance, education, scientific research, and medical care. The first phase is equipped with 90,000 Virtual CPU (VCPU) cores and 42P storage capacity, and the final phase is planned to reach 2 million VCPU cores and 900P storage.
█ Conclusion
In summary, through the layout of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hub node in the "East Data, West Computing" project, Hebei is gradually realizing the leap from a "major province in industrial manufacturing" and a "major province in power output" to a "strong province in computing power services."
Nowadays, the whole society is emphasizing digital transformation, industrial transformation, and green transformation. Hebei has utilized its own advantages, kept pace with the wave of the AI era, and explored a new path for digital economy development with distinctive characteristics, which is highly worthy of reference and promotion.
The reason why Hebei can become China's No. 1 province in computing power is not a coincidence driven by trends, but the result of the superposition of four factors: location, green power, national strategy, and industrial scenarios.
This land, once famous for its steel industry, is growing into the most solid computing power foundation for Digital China.