China’s computing must get faster as economic rivalry intensifies, but ‘it will be a long process’, warns former bank head
- At risk of falling further behind the US in computing power, China’s only option is to urgently ramp up its related infrastructure, urges prominent tech advocate
- From AI like ChatGPT to ride-hailing services, high-speed computing capabilities are at the core of China’s technological self-sufficiency drive
The speed at which computers can perform complex calculations and process data has become so blazingly fast that keeping up with the ever-expanding limits of computing power is a critical component in the economic rivalries between nations.
As such, this global race to build world-leading computing infrastructures demands an urgent and rapid response from Beijing, according to a former senior banker.
China must rally the resources of both local governments and corporate giants to play catch-up, as the United States has attained data dominance and may raise technological barriers amid geopolitical tensions, according to Li Lihui, former president of the Bank of China, one of the country’s Big Four state-owned banks.
“[This] requires us to keep investing huge amounts of financial and human resources … and stay patient, since it will be a long process,” he said at a forum over the weekend.
Li, now chairman of private think tank New Financial Alliance (NFA), is a prominent advocate for the use of blockchains and advanced technologies to revamp the Chinese economy.
The NFA hosted the forum, which focused on “digital intelligence transformation” and the application of “big model technology” among financial institutions.
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Is China’s technology falling behind in the race for its own ChatGPT?
The high demand for data, resources and energy during the development of computing-power capacity will result in a few countries or companies dominating these areas that will serve as catalysts for future economic growth, Li warned.
As of 2021, China had a 33 per cent share of the world’s computing power, second only to the US, which ranked first with 34 per cent of the world’s share, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
China should strive to be a global leader “when considering the layout and construction of computing infrastructures”, Li added.
But there are still significant hurdles in Beijing’s way.
Domestically, a “data divide” exists because information is not fully shared between different Chinese regions and sectors. Meanwhile, the US and some of its Western allies have accumulated large databases of shared resources, and this puts China in a vulnerable position.
“The escalating technological barriers set up by the US and its allies against China are likely to extend, from high-end chips and core software to data resources, creating a man-made data divide,” Li added.
Li also stressed the importance of advancements in China’s ambitious plan to send extensive data from eastern to western regions of the country where energy is more abundant and cheaper, to make the data flow more efficiently.
Meanwhile, he said, Beijing can work toward this goal with help from its private sector, by nurturing a more favourable business environment to cultivate and enhance innovation.
“We must speed up the construction of high-level computing-power infrastructure and advanced data infrastructure … and maintain national digital security,” he added.
