Computing power is widely regarded as the core infrastructure and “engine” in the era of artificial intelligence. Driven by the AI wave, the global demand for computing power continues to rise.

Recently, the “China Digital Island” under planning and construction in Wuhu has attracted the attention of foreign media, also casting the spotlight on this seemingly less well – known city.

In the national computing power landscape, Wuhu is one of the ten major data center clusters in the country’s “Eastern Data and Western Computing” project. The “China Digital Island” is the core area of the starting zone of the Wuhu data center cluster and also a major “new landmark” in the development of China’s intelligent computing infrastructure.

According to the “Research Report on the Development of Intelligent Computing Infrastructure (2024)” released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, currently, China’s intelligent computing power is mainly distributed in national computing power hub nodes such as Hohhot (Helinge’er), Guiyang, and Wuhu, as well as AI super – first – tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, to support the training of general large – scale foundation models and high – concurrency reasoning applications.

On this basis, in March this year, Liu Liehong, the director of the National Data Bureau, revealed at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office that the construction of computing power infrastructure will be continuously promoted, and by the end of this year, more than 60% of the newly added computing power is expected to be concentrated in national hub nodes.

When computing power becomes the main arena for technological competition among major countries, what role will the data center clusters represented by Wuhu play? What new opportunities will this “second – largest city in Anhui”, which was once “left behind” but has been stepping onto a new rhythm of industrial leap – forward in recent years, embrace?

Acceleration

Recently, the computing power industry in Wuhu has frequently witnessed new progress.

Huawei Cloud East China (Wuhu) Data Center on the “China Digital Island”. Image source: Wuhu Release

On September 20th, at the 2025 World Manufacturing Convention, the Yangtze River Delta Hub Wuhu Cluster Computing Power Public Service Platform released new achievements. In addition to successfully connecting to four major national platforms, the Wuhu Cluster Computing Power Public Service Platform has also added six new data centers –

They include the Mobile Cloud (Huainan) Computing Power Center, China Telecom Wuhu Cluster Big Data Center, China Mobile Yangtze River Delta (Hefei) Intelligent Computing Center, China Unicom Yangtze River Delta (Wuhu) Intelligent Computing Center, Yangtze River Core (Sugon Intelligent Computing Center), and the “Tianyan” Quantum Computing Cloud Platform.

In a sense, with the increased investment from enterprises, Wuhu’s computing power industry is gradually moving from the planning stage to the “harvest period”.

Not long ago, as the first demonstration project of the “Eastern Data and Western Computing” in Anhui, the Wuhu Integrated Intelligent Computing Center, known as the “Yangtze River Core”, was officially completed and put into use. Even earlier, in April this year, Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 super – nodes were deployed on a large scale in the Wuhu data center. Through comprehensive architectural innovation, it performs excellently in terms of computing power, inter – connection bandwidth, and memory bandwidth.

Data shows that as of now, the Wuhu Cluster Computing Power Public Service Platform has cumulatively connected 34 data centers, aggregating nearly 640P of general computing power, nearly 26,000P of intelligent computing power, 33.3P of super – computing power, and 2070 qubits of quantum computing power. It has not only formed a “four – in – one” computing power system but also ranks first in both the number of computing power qubits and the number of computing power standards in the country.

Why do large enterprises flock to Wuhu? The “national team” status is undoubtedly the key reason.

In 2022, the national “Eastern Data and Western Computing” project was officially launched, establishing a super – data center network of “eight hubs and ten clusters”. Wuhu is one of the two major clusters in the Yangtze River Delta hub.

Schematic diagram of the hub layout of the “Eastern Data and Western Computing” project. Image source: Website of the National Development and Reform Commission

More importantly, Wuhu bet on the computing power industry early on.

As early as 2017, Wuhu welcomed the only China Telecom Group – level cloud computing center in Anhui, which is also one of the 31 provincial – level cloud resource backbone nodes of China Telecom. With this as a carrier, the “Wuhu Digital Valley” was born. Since then, Wuhu has started to attract early investment from big data enterprises.

Up to now, strong policy support remains a prominent feature of Anhui’s computing power industry. According to the “IT Cloud Map 2025 China Computing Power Regional Competitiveness Research” released by CCID Consulting, in 2024, Anhui ranked 7th in the national evaluation of computing power industry development. Among them, it ranked 6th in the evaluation of computing power industry attractiveness, with strong performance in both policy support and carrier conditions.

The “Decision of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of Anhui Province on Further Promoting the High – Quality Development of the Digital Economy”, which will come into effect on October 1st, further proposes to accelerate the construction of the Wuhu data center cluster at the Yangtze River Delta national hub node of the national integrated computing power network and explore the integrated development of general computing power, intelligent computing power, super – computing power, and quantum computing power.

Previously, Wuhu publicly set the goal of building a “computing power center city”. This year, the concept of building an “intelligent computing city” has gradually appeared in local media reports.

Features

Why Wuhu?

Wuhu Intelligent Computing Economy Industrial Park. Image source: Xinhua News Agency

The computing power industry usually has high requirements for energy and climate. Similar to most “computing power cities”, Wuhu has sufficient energy to provide continuous energy supply for data centers.

Some analyses have pointed out that in the Yangtze River Delta region, Anhui is the only province with a positive net power supply, thanks to its multiple resource – based cities. Wuhu is adjacent to the load center of the East China Power Grid and has been planning the layout of power grid infrastructure in recent years, providing basic conditions for the development of the computing power industry.

However, compared with its resource advantages, Wuhu’s greater “advantage” lies in its synergy with cities in the Yangtze River Delta.

Looking at the overall pattern of the “Eastern Data and Western Computing”, the clusters on the east and west sides are assigned different functions. Among them, due to the long distance from the industrial agglomeration areas in the eastern coastal regions, the western data centers face problems such as latency. Therefore, they mainly handle back – end processing, offline analysis, storage backup, and other services with low network requirements.

The eastern hubs, on the other hand, can undertake services with high network requirements, such as industrial Internet, financial securities, disaster warning, telemedicine, video calls, and artificial intelligence reasoning.

In the Yangtze River Delta region, there is Zhejiang, where the digital economy started early, Shanghai, which leads the country in the service industry, and Jiangsu, which has a large number of manufacturing transformation and upgrading needs. Facing a large amount of potential computing power demand, Wuhu has an advantage by providing computing power resources with lower cost and higher efficiency.

In fact, local media in Wuhu have repeatedly emphasized that its fiber – optic network can directly reach hot cities in East and Central China, with a network latency of less than 10 milliseconds. The latency to Shanghai and Hangzhou is about 5 milliseconds, and it is even as low as 2 milliseconds to Nanjing. It can meet the requirements of AI reasoning, e – commerce, games, and other services with extremely high latency requirements, making it the preferred choice for high – computing – resource – consuming enterprises in the automotive, industrial, biomedical, and high – tech fields in the Yangtze River Delta.

Not long ago, at a press conference held by the Information Office of the Anhui Provincial Government, it was mentioned that currently, the scale of intelligent computing power built in Wuhu accounts for 70% of the total in Anhui. In terms of applications, the training of large – scale foundation models and the reasoning of large – scale models in scenarios such as intelligent driving are the main consumers of Anhui’s intelligent computing power. For example, within the province, there are customers such as iFlytek, NIO, and Zhixiang Future.

In a sense, with the development of the computing power industry, Wuhu has been able to re – position itself and further integrate into the increasingly deep – seated industrial synergy network in the Yangtze River Delta.

One detail can also illustrate Wuhu’s integration.

At the 2025 Anhui Merchants Conference in March this year, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and Chairman of the Terminal BG, revealed that the East China regional headquarters is under construction in Luogang Park, Hefei. He also mentioned the already – operational Huawei Cloud East China (Wuhu) Data Center, which is expected to inject computing power into Huawei’s intelligent vehicle R & D, thus forming a close supply – chain supporting relationship.

Breakthrough

For Wuhu, this is also a rare opportunity for industrial transformation.

Image source: Xinhua News Agency

For many years, Wuhu has been troubled by the problem of industrial transformation. Historically, Wuhu rose to become the “second – largest city in Anhui” through the breakthrough in the manufacturing industry but once faced the challenge of slow transformation of traditional manufacturing. In terms of representative enterprises, Chery, Three Squirrels, Liulimei, and Conch Cement all come from traditional industries.

The turning point came in the automotive industry. Driven by the boom in automobile exports, Chery Automobile has taken the lead with its large – scale exports. Data shows that out of the 2.295 million vehicles sold by Chery last year, 1.14 million were exported overseas, surpassing BYD, the top domestic seller. With the help of Chery, Anhui’s automobile production exceeded that of Guangdong this year, ranking first in the country.

For Wuhu, the automotive industry has also become an important driving force for economic growth. Last year, Wuhu’s GDP exceeded 500 billion yuan for the first time, with a year – on – year growth rate of 6.4%. Among them, the added value of the automotive manufacturing industry increased by 20.0%, and the production of new – energy vehicles increased by 157.1%.

However, Wuhu does not want to rely solely on the automotive industry. Previously, when being interviewed by the media, Ning Bo, the Secretary of the Wuhu Municipal Party Committee, mentioned that the automotive industry is the primary industry in Wuhu. On this basis, Wuhu has also planned four new industrial “tracks”, including new – energy and intelligent connected vehicles, digital economy, intelligent robots, and low – altitude economy.

The computing power industry is the core of Wuhu’s digital economy planning. Facing the new wave of computing power construction, Wuhu also faces new challenges.

Although it has the label of the “national team”, Wuhu also faces competition from many places in the Yangtze River Delta. On the one hand, the digital center cluster in the integrated demonstration area in the Yangtze River Delta has set a target of 60,000P for intelligent computing power scale by 2027, which is comparable to Wuhu’s goal. On the other hand, cities such as Yancheng in Jiangsu, Jiaxing and Ningbo in Zhejiang are all making efforts in computing power construction, and the “computing power war” in the Yangtze River Delta is becoming increasingly fierce.

Moreover, the advantages of the Yangtze River Delta are not easily obtainable.

This year, the Wuhu Data Resources Management Bureau participated in training in Zhejiang. In an article published on the official website of the Wuhu government, it was mentioned that “there is still a certain gap in terms of talent resources, industrial foundation, and technological innovation in Wuhu’s attempt to build an intelligent computing city”. In terms of cost alone, “the electricity price is higher compared with the western hubs”.

In addition, some researchers have pointed out that there are still obstacles in the cross – regional computing power coordination mechanism, and the problem of mismatching between computing power supply and demand is prominent. The utilization rate of computing power in Hefei is only 65%, and in Songjiang, Shanghai, there is a large – scale queuing phenomenon for enterprises and research projects. Further exploration is still needed in terms of mechanism construction and ecological integration.

Ning Bo, the Secretary of the Wuhu Municipal Party Committee, once pointed out that the era of rapid urban development has ended, but Wuhu still needs to strive for progress and move forward. Looking at the economic aggregate rankings of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta, for Wuhu to play a leading role in the future, it needs to enter the top 10. Currently, there is still a large gap and a long way to go. As Wuhu enters the computing power track, can it further change the industrial pattern in the Yangtze River Delta?

This article is from the WeChat public account “Urban Evolution Theory”, author: Yang Qifei, published by 36Kr with authorization.