China's Plans to Make AI a Utility

中国将人工智能打造为公共事业的计划

Big Take Asia

2025-07-09

22 分钟
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In a remote part of China's northwestern Xinjiang region, dozens of data centers rise from the desert. A Bloomberg analysis of investor and tax documents and company filings found Chinese companies plan to buy more than 115,000 high-tech Nvidia chips — chips the US has banned from being exported to China – to power these centers, which could then be used for training AI models. On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg’s Andy Lin and James Mayger about the story, and what it means for China’s AI master plan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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  • Bloomberg Audio Studios.

  • Podcasts, radio, news.

  • Earlier this year, our colleague James Mager took a trip to the middle of the desert in the remote region of Xinjiang, China.

  • Xinjiang is the western third of China, basically.

  • It borders Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and you would where we went on this trip is situated in a River Valley.

  • It's got these lovely snow cap mountains overlooking the town.

  • It really was a stunningly beautiful place, but very hard to get to.

  • James was there on a leap generated by Bloomberg's data journalism team,

  • that a handful of Chinese companies were building some 40 data centers across the region

  • and planned to power them with tens of thousands of Nvidia chips.

  • Chips that the US banned from being exported to China in 2022.

  • As well, China has criticized the US moves to expand restrictions on his access to semiconductor technologies

  • saying that they will harm supply chains and the world economy.

  • They want to build a AI industry that can go head-to-head with the US.

  • Bloomberg data reporter Andy Lynn led the team's investigation.

  • In modern warfare AI is playing a larger role.

  • So, the US is worried about China developing the AI capacity was developing the high-end military.

  • That's the aim.

  • Since the Biden administration's initial restrictions on advanced AI chips,

  • the US has tightened export controls, putting them at the center of tensions with Beijing.