The US and China are locked in a series of races, with AI now sitting at the center of nearly all of them. This is a race not only to build the leading frontier models, but to deploy them across entire economies, unleash physical AI, and convert compute power into productivity, surveillance, military, and industrial advantage ahead of the 2030s. This is the new world we are entering, and it is moving incredibly fast. The current chapter of this story is the data center build-out phase. It will then eventually extend into space.
Goldman has already estimated that US hyperscalers will deploy $800 billion in capex this year alone on AI infrastructure. Across the Pacific, however, the scale of Beijing's data-center buildout had remained relatively opaque until now.
China is preparing to unleash a 2 trillion yuan ($295 billion) data-center buildout phase over the next five years, according to a new Bloomberg News report, citing people familiar with the matter, as Beijing and Washington race to ensure their own tech giants are ahead in the frontier model race.
The report said the National Development and Reform Commission is drafting plans for a network of interconnected data centers to be operated by state firms such as China Mobile and China Telecom.
These data centers are expected to rely heavily on domestic chip suppliers, including Huawei, for at least 80% of core technology. This is a move by Beijing to accelerate the development of its domestic chipmakers by sidelining Nvidia and AMD.
More color about the buildout:
The over-arching plan represents Beijing's most aggressive endeavor yet to lay the foundation for future Chinese AI development.
It recalls the undertakings of years past that marshalled resources to support national champions like Huawei, with the aim of replacing US technology. And it's a key prong of the "Six Networks" program announced earlier this year, covering construction of essential infrastructure spanning water and electricity to computing, one of the people said.
The report sent Chinese data-center stocks higher in the premarket: GDS Holdings rose by 5% and Vnet Group jumped 8%.
The US-China rivalry is extending well beyond the chip space. It should be viewed as a full-blown industrial race, and China's planned data-center buildout shows that Beijing is trying to fuse AI, power infrastructure, domestic chips, and state financing into a single national mobilization strategy.
Given that this is now a full-blown industrial race, Beijing's broader strategy is no longer limited to chips, data centers, and power infrastructure. It also extends into the domain of information.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute has warned of "three vectors of foreign influence," including CCP state media, the Singham network, and foreign-billionaire dark money, behind elements of the anti-AI data center campaign in the US.
If correct, that would suggest China's playbook is not just to accelerate its own AI buildout, but to slow, divide, and politically constrain America's.