(Yicai) June 1 -- ZTE views the artificial intelligence-driven global buildout of computing power, data centers, and digital infrastructure as a major overseas growth opportunity, and is positioning itself as a partner in building an open, ecosystem-based “digital tropical rainforest,” rather than just a hardware supplier, according to the Chinese tech firm’s chief development officer.

Just as different species in the Amazon rainforest live in mutual benefit and form a resilient ecosystem, “we hope that we can build a similar digital intelligent ecosystem in the era of data and intelligence,” Cui Li told Yicai at the Beyond Expo 2026 in Macau. “Every company in every link can contribute its strength and wisdom to it,” she said.

Cui summed up Shenzhen-based ZTE’s overseas strategy. Its first tack is to cooperate with leading Chinese internet firms on going abroad. She noted that data security compliance requirements are becoming stricter, and the demand for latency reliability is increasing, which makes the deployment of local data centers a “must-have” for overseas internet services.

Chinese internet titans such as Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, and Tik Tok-owner ByteDance Technology are accelerating their overseas infrastructure buildout. “At many public occasions, they are emphasizing localization plans,” she said.

ZTE has already worked with Alibaba Cloud to build data centers in Indonesia and Algeria. Alibaba’s cloud computing arm provides platform capabilities and global consistency services, while ZTE offers end-to-end hardware solutions, a global local delivery team, and supply chain guarantees

“We’ve set up branches in more than 180 countries and are capable of global local delivery,” said Cui, who is also chief assistant to ZTE Chief Executive Xu Ziyang. “Very few manufacturers can do this.”

The second part of the firm’s overseas strategy is to join hands with energy companies and manufacturers going abroad. The international green energy shift and the overseas expansion of Chinese manufacturing firms have created demand for smart factories and smart power grids.

Cui said ZTE has worked with Chinese electric vehicle producer GAC Aion in Thailand, where private fifth-generation networks, all-optical networks, and integrated industrial machines have been deployed in its factory, helping the carmaker start at the most advanced digital starting point at the very moment it went overseas.

When speaking about emerging markets, Cui raised the issue of the “digital divide,” the social and economic inequality created by uneven access to digital technologies. “Once the information superhighway reaches remote areas, information flows, and information flow means opportunity,” she noted.

To date, the company has helped to lay rural networks for 580,000 remote users in Libya, and has trained hundreds of telecom professionals in Uzbekistan in collaboration with universities there, she said.

Editor: Tom Litting