China Projected to Hold 30% of Global Computing Power by 2030
Speaking at the China Computing Power Conference, Academician Wu Hequan projected that China's share of global computing power will reach 30% by 2030, up from its current 21%. He highlighted that rapid AI agent deployment drove daily global token consumption to 140 trillion in March, creating a direct surge in computing infrastructure demand. The projection underscores China's ambitious national strategy to scale up computing infrastructure and narrow the gap with the US, which currently holds 46% of global computing capacity. As AI applications transition toward agent-driven workflows, token consumption patterns will increasingly dictate national infrastructure strategies and economic investments. Wu stressed that technical progress will prioritize token efficiency over sheer volume as token application costs continue to drop. According to China Telecom estimates, China's annual AI token consumption is expected to explode from 100 quadrillion in 2026 to over 35,000 quadrillion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of nearly 12x.
## BACKGROUND
In large language models, tokens represent the basic units of text processed during input and generation, serving as a direct proxy for computational workload and cost. China has been building a National Computing Power Network to aggregate and distribute data center capacity nationwide, aiming to make computing power as universally accessible as water or electricity.