On August 28, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the list of regional nodes for national computing power interconnection construction, with 17 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) including Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hubei, Guangdong, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia selected. Shaanxi was included in the list.
At first glance, this appears to simply add another "national designation" in the computing power sector, but when viewed over a longer time horizon, its significance runs far deeper. In past years, Shaanxi's development of computing power primarily addressed the question of "whether I have a computing center here or not." This new round of national computing power interconnection construction, however, begins to answer a different question: with so much computing capacity nationwide, can it be discovered, called upon, traded, and dispatched?
This signals that competition in the computing power industry is shifting from "who has built more data centers" to "who can organize computing power effectively." For Shaanxi, what truly merits attention is not how many data centers it will build, but whether it can leverage Xi'an's scientific research, industrial, and network foundations to position itself within a new northwestern computing power division of labor.
First, let's clarify a point that is often confused. Shaanxi was not selected for the "National Integrated Computing Power Network Hub Nodes" this time — it entered the National Computing Power Interconnection Regional Nodes. These are two different systems. The "East Data, West Computing" project launched in 2022 established a spatial framework of "8 national computing power hubs plus 10 national data center clusters." Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Guizhou are all key carrying regions for national computing power hubs. The National Development and Reform Commission has explicitly proposed developing low-cost, green data centers in regions with favorable energy and climate conditions to handle non-real-time computing demands such as national back-office processing, offline analysis, and storage backup.
The national computing power interconnection nodes, by contrast, represent a different "network." According to a notice issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in February 2026, the national computing power interconnection node system consists of "1 national computing power internet service node + M regional nodes + N industry nodes." The "1" has already been completed. The "M" refers to regional nodes built for areas with strong computing demand, while the "N" targets key industries. The most important task of regional nodes is not simply building another data center, but constructing a unified service platform that enables computing resource aggregation, identifier management, interconnection dispatch, operational monitoring, and security assurance.
More critically, the national government requires these nodes to operate under "unified identifiers, unified standards, and unified rules," allowing computing resources to truly enter the national market. In other words, computing power that was once a series of "isolated islands" now has "highways" being built to connect them. 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 national public computing resources should be basically achieved, gradually forming a computing power internet capable of "intelligent perception, real-time discovery, and on-demand acquisition."
Therefore, what Shaanxi has obtained this time is not an ordinary "computing project qualification" in the general sense, but a ticket into the national computing power circulation network.
Why did Shaanxi earn this entry ticket? The answer is more complex than simply saying "Shaanxi has advantages in computing power." Competition in the computing power network is no longer just about comparing electricity prices, rack counts, and PUE. It increasingly resembles past transportation hub competition — the fact that a highway passes through a location does not necessarily mean that location will become an economic center. What truly matters is: Is there enough cargo? Are there enough destinations? Is there enough trading activity? Is there strong enough hub organization capability?
Computing power works the same way. Shaanxi's greatest advantage lies in simultaneously possessing the four conditions of "supply, demand, network, and industry." First, Shaanxi has a computing power supply foundation. Xi'an has formed multi-tiered computing infrastructure including supercomputing and intelligent computing. In particular, the connection between the National Supercomputing Center in Xi'an and the National Supercomputing Internet gives Xi'an a strong foundation for organizing computing power in scenarios such as scientific research computing, science-intelligent computing, industrial simulation, and new materials R&D.
Second, Shaanxi has enormous computing power demand. The density of universities, research institutes, and advanced manufacturing industries in Xi'an holds obvious advantages in the northwest. Compared to the "computing power factories" of other western provinces such as Ningxia and Gansu, Xi'an more closely resembles a "computing power application market."
Third, Shaanxi has abundant energy resources. This point cannot be overlooked either. Shaanxi is a major national energy base with rich coal, natural gas, wind power, and photovoltaic resources. In 2025, Shaanxi's annual electricity export volume exceeded 100 billion kilowatt-hours for the first time. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, newly installed wind and solar capacity reached 37.2 million kilowatts. Shaanxi's "15th Five-Year Plan" targets clearly state that by 2030, renewable energy installed capacity will reach 120 million kilowatts, with non-fossil energy installed capacity for provincial self-use accounting for approximately 60 percent. This means Shaanxi is not without "green computing power" cards to play.
Yulin deserves special mention. Yulin 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 power infrastructure.
Fourth, Shaanxi possesses network and industrial hub capabilities rarely seen in the northwest. Gansu has been continuously building high-speed backbone networks from Qingyang to Xi'an, Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, and Chongqing, and has deployed backbone fiber optic lines connecting Qingyang via Lanzhou and Yinchuan to western regions. Within this framework, Xi'an itself serves as a key network and industrial node. As a result, a highly interesting spatial relationship is taking shape: computing power from Qingyang and Zhongwei can converge toward Xi'an, while Xi'an's industrial and scientific research demands can seek computing resources from Qingyang and Zhongwei.
When discussing computing power in the northwest, two main roles typically emerge. One is the computing power 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, addressing 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 favorable energy, land, and climate conditions but relatively insufficient local digital industry and computing demand. Thus, some computing demand was transferred from east to west.
But in the AI era, the computing power economy is undergoing transformation. AI training requires large-scale GPU clusters, while inference requires computing capacity closer to application endpoints; scientific research computing requires supercomputers; and industrial intelligence requires large amounts of heterogeneous computing power. The distance and coordination between computing power and data, industry, models, and applications are becoming increasingly important. This means "cheap computing power" is only the first level of competition — how computing power is discovered, dispatched, and matched to demand is becoming the second level of competition.
Shaanxi's entry presents its biggest opportunity precisely in this second level of competition — or possibly in charting an alternative path altogether. From an endowment perspective, Xi'an possesses industrial foundations in university research, defense, aerospace, automotive, and semiconductors; Yulin has energy chemicals and new energy; and northern Shaanxi has further energy space to host computing power infrastructure. At the same time, Shaanxi is developing 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 opportunity to become an important gateway for computing power trading and dispatch in the northwest. Shaanxi is currently advancing projects such as the Silk Road Computing Power Trading (Dispatch) Platform and the Shaanxi Data Big Data Industry Park. In August, the Shaanxi Data Group also jointly launched the "Smart Cloud Shaanxi TOKEN Supermarket" platform with China Telecom Shaanxi, attempting to provide integrated services for capabilities including models, data, computing networks, and industry solutions. This can already be seen as a "warm-up" before the regional node construction.
With this entry into the national regional node, Shaanxi finally has a mechanism to connect these "production-side" resources with "demand-side" needs. Whether Shaanxi can secure a "third role" in the northwestern computing power landscape — moving from a fragmented computing supply and demand market to becoming a "computing dispatch + industry application" hub connecting computing production bases in Gansu and Ningxia — is far more worthy of attention and anticipation than simply "obtaining a computing power designation."