Bangalore: With an online population of around 500 million, China is vigorously racing to complete its construction of big, efficient and abundant datacenters as well as super-computer sites, especially with the development of national computer infrastructure in its latest five year plan.

The massive construction of a supercomputing site in the Shenzhen province was noted last year at the IEEE Forum, by IBM’s vice president of deep computing- David Turek , as China's serious effort to develop itself in the field of supercomputing.
According to Steve Sams, VP of global site and facilities services (a unit of Global Technology Services), the Hebei Langfang Range Information Hub would be the centerpiece of China’s third development zone. The Hebei project is expected to be completed by 2016. Another data-center development project is underway in the province of Shanghai.

 Local governments are providing their support and funding to this cause, and aim for the construction of as many as 20 data centers with time.

The past has seen China undergoing tides of growth, but none of them have been well-planned and organized said Rick Einhorn, worldwide director for HP's Critical Facilities Services group.
However, Sams said that the data centers under planning and current construction would be built according to the latest eco-friendly construction concepts.

Foreign companies and businesses such as IBM and HP along with businesses in the US will benefit greatly from this growth spurt, as emphasized by Einhorn. "We have more people in China focused on data center development and strategy than, I believe, in any country in the world," he said.

However, some analysts such as Michelle Bailey from IDC say some companies might not pick China as a center for international IT services as a result of its policies regarding “…ownership rights for data and other assets.” She said it would be interesting if China could evolve to keep in step with the market.

Other competitors in the race to build super-computing centers, as pointed out by Turek, include Europe, Japan and Russia.