China is building an AI future far from its biggest cities

An empty lot is stacked with aluminum brackets, steel rods and wooden planks in Ulanqab, China. Set in rolling grassland, Ulanqab is an unlikely technological hub. Yet this modest city of less than 2 million people in Inner Mongolia has found itself on the front line of China's efforts to relocate computing power away from its crowded eastern megacities and out to its western regions, where both space and inexpensive green energy are abundant. At one cluttered intersection on the eastern edge of the city on a Friday at lunchtime, workers streamed out of a cluster of data-center construction sites -- a reminder of the scale of the endeavor here, some 350 kilometers northwest of Beijing. Still wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests, their pants and boots caked in dust, they congregated at a cluster of trucks selling cheap meals, beer and cigarettes.