Inner Mongolia flexing green computing, AI biz strengths

North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region is emerging as a leading national base for green computing and is also setting its sights on global artificial intelligence services, backed by abundant renewable energy, expanding computing infrastructure and low-latency links to China's main technology markets.

The push took center stage during the 2026 Green Computing Power (AI) Conference held on Saturday in Hohhot, the region's capital. The event featured the release of new industry reports, frontier project agreements and platforms for trading AI services.

According to a green computing power index report released at the conference, Inner Mongolia, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and Guizhou province are leading the country's eight national computing hub nodes in green computing development.

The National Data Administration said China's intelligent computing capacity reached 2.45 million petaflops as of end-July, with the eight national computing hubs accounting for more than 80 percent of the total.

Inner Mongolia ranked among the leading hubs, with 326,000 petaflops of intelligent computing capacity and more than 85 percent of its data center electricity coming from green energy.

"Inner Mongolia has made notable progress in supplying green computing power and fostering new business models, offering valuable experience for green computing development nationwide," said Xia Bing, deputy head of the NDA, at the conference.

Xia said computing infrastructure is entering a new stage that emphasizes system-wide efficiency rather than merely resource expansion. The administration will focus on the "east data, west computing" project, nationwide monitoring and dispatch, and closer coordination between computing facilities and power systems.

Computing-power and electricity coordination is intended to address China's geographical mismatch between computing demand, which is concentrated in the east, and green electricity resources, which are concentrated in the west. Driven by surging AI demand, computing-power and electricity coordination was included in the country's Government Work Report for the first time this year.

Against this backdrop, more than 60 percent of Inner Mongolia's computing capacity is currently allocated to Beijing, showing its essential role in supporting the latency-sensitive computing needs of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

The conference also signaled the autonomous region's upgrading strategy from building data centers to selling higher-value computing and AI services. Hohhot and Ulaanqab signed 13 projects with a total planned investment of 136.1 billion yuan ($20.2 billion), covering microchip testing, computing equipment, data centers and "token factories", which produce and process the basic units used by large language AI models.

A wide range of pilot achievements was also showcased during the conference, including the country's first trusted data space, an urban high-speed computing network with millisecond-level latency, AI application scenarios and green electricity infrastructure.

Contact the writers at lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn