Key Points
- Guangdong Province has released an action plan to promote high-quality development of its marine economy, revealing a strategic pivot toward underwater data centers.
- The plan aims to accelerate the marine electronic information industry, creating an ecosystem covering “sensing, transmission, storage, calculation, and application.”
- Underwater data centers leverage seawater for natural cooling, significantly reducing energy consumption (traditional data centers spend 30-40% of energy on cooling) and operational costs.
- This initiative represents a move towards sustainable, strategically positioned digital infrastructure and a novel solution to the real estate crunch faced by traditional data centers.
- Similar high-tech marine initiatives in Guangdong have historically seen investments ranging from ¥10 billion to ¥20 billion RMB (approximately $1.41 billion to $2.82 billion USD).
China’s tech ambitions just went deeper—literally.
Guangdong Province (Guangdong Sheng 广东省) just dropped a major play in the infrastructure game.
The General Office of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the People’s Government of Guangdong Province (Guangdong Sheng Renmin Zhengfu Bangongting 广东省人民政府办公厅) officially released the “Guangdong Province Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of the Marine Economy (2025–2027).”
And it’s not just another government document gathering dust in some filing cabinet.
This strategic roadmap reveals something fascinating about how China is approaching the next generation of data infrastructure—by taking it underwater.
Why Guangdong’s Marine Economy Matters Right Now
Here’s the context you need to understand: data centers are hungry beasts.
They consume massive amounts of electricity.
They generate incredible amounts of heat.
And they’re becoming more critical to global tech infrastructure by the day.
Guangdong isn’t just building data centers—the province is reimagining how to build them sustainably and strategically.
The action plan signals a major pivot toward integrating digital innovation with marine sector development.
This isn’t accidental. It’s intentional infrastructure strategy.
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The Marine Electronic Information Industry: Building the Tech Stack
The Guangdong action plan proposes accelerating the strategic layout of the marine electronic information industry.
Translation: The province wants to create an entire ecosystem around using ocean technology for digital purposes.
Think about what this means operationally:
- The province is promoting integrated development of the digital economy with marine sectors.
- Guangdong aims to actively participate in constructing the national marine observation network.
- The initiative leverages existing technical reserves from Shenzhen (Shenzhen 深圳) in “Smart Ocean” technologies.
What’s interesting here is the industrial chain they’re targeting: “sensing, transmission, storage, calculation, and application.”
That’s basically the entire data pipeline.
Sensing the ocean conditions.
Transmitting that data reliably.
Storing it securely.
Processing it (calculation).
And then applying insights from that data to improve marine operations and digital services.
This is a vertically integrated approach to marine tech infrastructure.
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The Game-Changer: Underwater Data Centers
Now we get to the really interesting part.
The action plan includes a directive to explore and plan the construction of underwater data centers in municipalities that possess the necessary conditions.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Underwater data centers.
This isn’t pure science fiction. It’s happening.
How Underwater Data Centers Work
- Integrated natural seawater cooling systems
- Reduction in power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio
- Protection from terrestrial natural disasters
- Minimal land acquisition requirements
The core advantage here is elegantly simple: seawater provides natural cooling.
Consider the problem data centers face:
- Traditional data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity just for cooling systems.
- Temperature regulation can account for 30-40% of total energy consumption in standard facilities.
- This drives up operational costs and carbon footprint significantly.
- Environmental impact becomes a serious concern at scale.
By placing data centers on the seabed, Guangdong aims to:
- Utilize seawater as a natural cooling mechanism.
- Significantly reduce energy consumption compared to traditional facilities.
- Promote sustainable digital infrastructure for long-term operations.
- Lower operational costs over the facility’s lifetime.
This is infrastructure thinking with teeth.
It solves a real problem (cooling costs and environmental impact) while creating strategic advantages (lower operating expenses, sustainability credentials).
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Investment Scale and Strategic Significance
While the action plan doesn’t detail specific investment figures for individual underwater data center projects, Guangdong continues to allocate substantial capital toward marine innovation.
For context on investment patterns in the region:
Similar high-tech marine initiatives in Guangdong have historically seen investments ranging from:
- ¥10 billion RMB (approximately $1.41 billion USD) on the lower end
- To ¥20 billion RMB (approximately $2.82 billion USD) as part of long-term infrastructure goals
These aren’t small bets.
These are transformative infrastructure investments that signal serious provincial commitment.
For context: that’s comparable to major tech infrastructure projects globally.
Why This Matters for Tech Leaders and Investors
Guangdong’s underwater data center initiative reveals several important trends:
1. Sustainable Infrastructure is Strategic Now
China’s recognizing that energy efficiency isn’t just environmental—it’s competitive advantage.
Lower operational costs mean lower service costs, which means better margins and pricing power.
2. Geographic Diversification of Data Infrastructure
By developing marine-based data centers, Guangdong creates geographically distributed infrastructure that reduces risk and latency.
This is smart redundancy.
3. Integration of Multiple Tech Domains
The action plan doesn’t silently build data centers in isolation.
It’s creating an entire marine electronic information ecosystem that combines sensing, transmission, storage, computation, and application.
That’s platform thinking.
4. Real Estate for Future Tech
Underwater space is abundant and typically underutilized.
This represents a novel approach to solving the real estate crunch that traditional data centers face in densely populated regions.
The Bottom Line on Guangdong’s Underwater Data Infrastructure
Guangdong’s move toward underwater data centers represents a deliberate shift in how governments approach digital infrastructure strategy.
It’s not just about building more capacity—it’s about building smarter, more sustainable, and more strategically positioned capacity.
The province is leveraging geographic advantages, technical expertise from innovation hubs like Shenzhen (Shenzhen 深圳), and long-term capital allocation to create infrastructure that will power the next decade of digital services.
This is the kind of forward-thinking infrastructure play that separates regional leaders from the rest of the pack.
Whether it’s Guangdong’s underwater data centers or other emerging tech infrastructure trends, the message is clear: the future of digital infrastructure isn’t just about processing power anymore—it’s about doing it sustainably, strategically, and at scale.
