A 40-minute high-speed rail trip from Beijing North Station brings you to Donghuayuan Bei in Zhangjiakou, where wind turbines dot Guanting Reservoir and massive data center warehouses now dominate the semi-rural landscape. This Hebei city, once developed for the 2022 Winter Olympics, has become a key node in China's Eastern Data Western Compute initiative, leveraging its proximity to Beijing and abundant renewable energy.

Zhangjiakou's data centers consumed 1.859 billion kWh in 2024, with green electricity accounting for just 30% of total usage. The city attracts both private investment and state-operated telecom facilities, making it relatively successful compared to more remote clusters in Gansu, Ningxia, and Xinjiang. The EDWC project aimed to coordinate data center energy needs with renewable energy development, but implementation has been messy.

Local governments have turned data center permitting into a political battleground, with some operators bribing officials to build facilities that may outstrip renewable capacity. Despite being built near renewable sources, these centers still rely heavily on coal and gas-fired power plants for reliable energy. The result is overbuilding and overcapacity, with many facilities underutilized or empty. While China's National Data Bureau reports 45.5 billion Yuan invested through the plan, the future remains uncertain as demand struggles to catch up with the speculative building frenzy.