TECH

Servers in tunnels dug in the mountains process gigabytes of data

In Guiyang, capital of one of China's poorest provinces, thousands of servers, arranged in mountain tunnels between rice paddies and groves, process in real time 'gigabytes' of data from tech giants.Located in southwest China, it has become the center of China's 'big data' industry in recent years, attracting firms such as Apple, Huawei, Tencent or Alibaba, with tax incentives and labor and electricity cockroaches."Local youth continue to go to other cities, but now many go back to work," said Wu Zhanghong, head of the Guiyang Young Professionals Association, in a phenomenon that runs counter to the traditional migratory flow to the prosperous coastal provinces.Hundreds of glazed towers and luxury complexes stand today in the capital of Guizhou, a province where a quarter of the population - 11.5 million people - continues to live below the poverty line set by the Chinese authorities - 6.3 yuan per day (84 euro cents).
"When I was young I was hungry," says a middle-aged waitress with a chubby face. "But today as well."
In 2017, Guiyang's Gross Domestic Product advanced 11.3 percent to 353 billion yuan (48 billion euros). In the same period, the Chinese economy grew by 6.9%.
In the suburbs of the city, tunnels dug into mountains store data for the main Chinese technological firms. The location ensures a constant natural flow of air, avoiding the overheating of thousands of servers operating 24 hours in 24 hours.
The development of the 'big date' is one of China's priorities in modernizing national industries and public administration, but it has been criticized for allowing the Chinese regime greater vigilance over its citizens.
"China is implementing a national 'big data' strategy that will help the country transition from a high-growth economic model to a high-quality one," said Chinese President Xi Jinping in the message. opened an event dedicated to the sector in Guiyang last week.
At the headquarters of the Chinese group Truck Alliance Group, LED panels with two meters high, arranged over thirty meters, display in detail real-time data on logistics flows throughout China.
The firm's $ 6 billion business model is unique in the world: it links truckers to companies that need to transport their goods in a country where trucking is provided by independent drivers.
"We maximize each shift," a group spokesman says. "For each year, on average, we save each driver 50,000 yuan (6,690 euros) in fuel," he explains.The 'big data' generated by the Truck Alliance serves, for example, for insurers to create new products, redefine the location of filling stations or combat congestion. Part of the company's premises is occupied by the police, which thus guarantees access to the data, allowing the detection of irregularities in real time.

Rice planting in China's interior

Critics point out, however, the dangers of concentrating data in an authoritarian state that is creating a social credit system that assigns points to each citizen according to their behavior, financial situation, professional or academic performance.Sebastian Heilmann, German political scientist, classifies that system of "digital leninism"."A social credit system is a completely new perspective in the regulation not only of the economy and the market, but also of society," he says.However, inside Guizhou, the other concerns are: "Here, one works to survive," says Luo Hongxia, a native of Guangzhou and a volunteer teacher in a remote village in the province."People feed, but they do not have access to meat," he says. "are undernourished."



Lusa