(Yicai) May 9 -- China is expected to produce more than 50 zettabytes, or 50 billion terabytes, of data this year, which is a 22 percent jump from last year, as smart home appliances, connected cars and drones drive growth, according to a recent government survey.

It follows strong growth in 2024, when China's data production volume surged 25 percent to 41 ZB, according to the National Data Resource Survey Report 2024 which was released at the recent Digital China Summit. It is the second nationwide statistical survey of data resources, following the release of the first report last year.

Smart connected vehicles and artificial intelligence tools such as large language models are behind this surge in data, Jiang Yan, a member of the National Data Resource Statistical Survey Working Group and director of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, told reporters. These types of data now make up over 40 percent of the total.

Data production in emerging fields such as the low-altitude economy and robotics is not yet very high, but their growth rate is over 30 percent each year, and they are becoming new growth points.

Smart tech is speeding up how much data China produces, the report said. With the rapid development of AI, the volume of data used for development, training and inference surged 41 percent in 2024 year on year. Smart home devices and connected vehicles led the way, with data growth rates of 51 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

In terms of smart computing, China's total computing capacity reached 280 EFLOPS, or one quintillion floating-point operations a second, last year. Intelligent computing accounted for just under a third of this at 90 EFLOPS, providing a strong foundation for the processing of massive amounts of data.

Companies are also accelerating their investments in intelligent computing power. Among them, central state-owned enterprises have nearly tripled their computing power, with 40 percent of it now being used by intelligent computing. Data technology companies have almost doubled their computing power, with 44 percent dedicated to smart computing.

There are three main ways in which this data will be used to support the future development of AI, Liu Liehong, director of the National Data Administration, said in response to a question from Yicai at a recent press conference held by the State Council Information Office. First, through the building of more computing infrastructure. Second, by ensuring the steady supply of high-quality data. And lastly, by improving data circulation and trading.

In the past year, China has been accelerating the construction of a national integrated computing network, ensuring that new data centers work in sync with the layout of energy resources, Liu said. By the end of this year, over 60 percent of the newly added computing power is expected to be concentrated at national hubs, and more than 80 percent of it will run on green electricity.

Editor: Kim Taylor