Why Is China Building AI Centres On The Roof Of The World?

China has been reshaping its digital infrastructure with the launch of Yajiang-1, a state-of-the-art supercomputing center located in the high-altitude region of Shannan, Tibet. Nestled at 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, this new facility is the first major computing hub on the Tibetan Plateau under China’s “Eastern Data, Western Computing” strategy.

Yajiang-1 leverages the natural advantages of its extreme environment to improve energy efficiency in large-scale AI training, which requires millions of computing hours annually. By harnessing Tibet’s abundant solar power, frigid temperatures, and innovative heat recovery systems, the centre dramatically reduces the environmental and operational costs of supercomputing.

In its initial phase, the facility has rolled out more than 256 high-performance servers, collectively delivering a staggering 2,000 petaflops of processing power. That level of computational capacity puts Yajiang-1 on track to become one of the most powerful AI training bases in China. The project is a joint effort between Tibet Yarlung Zangbo Computing Technology Company and the local government, and is intended to serve as a springboard for the development of high-altitude digital economies.

According to Han Shuangshuang, general manager of the company, Yajiang-1 is expected to accelerate breakthroughs in autonomous driving, smart healthcare, AI training, and ecological monitoring of the plateau. “Yajiang-1 will catalyse frontier innovation across AI training, autonomous driving, smart healthcare and plateau ecosystem monitoring,” Han told Science and Technology Daily, the official publication of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. He also confirmed that multiple partnerships are already in place to expand research and application in these fields.

First announced in 2022, the Eastern Data, Western Computing strategy seeks to rebalance China’s digital economy by building massive computing centres in the resource-rich west. These facilities are tasked with handling offline data processing, storage, and non-urgent analytics, freeing up real-time computing resources in the densely populated eastern provinces.

Yajiang-1, with its high-altitude advantages and green infrastructure, serves as a prototype for how China envisions the future of sustainable supercomputing.