Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang has called for accelerating the building of a national integrated computing power network to empower high-quality development.

Ding, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during a research trip on computing power network construction in Beijing Municipality, Hebei Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

At Beijing's AI public computing power center and Inner Mongolia's multi-cloud computing power resource monitoring and dispatching platform, Ding heard reports on computing power facility planning and learned in detail about computing power resource allocation.

Computing power is a key indicator of a country's comprehensive national strength, Ding said, calling for coordinated planning and orderly construction with a focus on matching supply with demand and coordinating computing power with electricity, so as to accelerate the building of a national network.

In light of the intertwining of traditional and emerging risks, Ding called for strengthening bottom-line thinking and enhancing the protection of facilities, models, data and networks, so as to improve the overall resilience of the computing power system.

Ding also visited data centers in Langfang in Hebei and Hohhot in Inner Mongolia to learn about the involvement of enterprises in the building and use of the computing power network.

Noting the country's rich data resources and vast application scenarios, Ding urged efforts to leverage these strengths and coordinate the development of computing power facilities, model algorithms and data resources to consolidate the foundation for digital and intelligent development.

He stressed the need to uphold self-reliance, foster a sound innovation ecosystem and accelerate breakthroughs in key technological bottlenecks. Work must be done to push domestic software and hardware from being "usable" to "easy-to-use," Ding said.

He also called for a market-oriented approach to make computing power more accessible and affordable.

Inner Mongolia boasts abundant wind and solar resources and a high share of green electricity. Ding visited the Inner Mongolia Power Group and a zero-carbon computing power base in Ulanqab to learn about the coordination of computing and electricity and low-carbon computing power development.

As the fast-growing data centers demand for more electricity, Ding called for coordinating the allocation of energy with the construction of computing facilities. 

Given the relatively large fluctuations in the international energy market this year, Ding stressed the need for solid work to ensure stable energy supply and prices, so as to meet the demand for production and daily use.

(Cover via VCG)