China targets 50% growth in computing power in race against the US

China aims to boost the country’s aggregate computing power by more than 50 per cent by 2025, according to a plan released by authorities on Monday, as Beijing tightens its focus on supercomputing and artificial intelligence innovations.The plan comes amid rising competition between China and the US in many high-tech areas ranging from semiconductors and supercomputers to AI, including US export controls on chipmaking equipment.
 

The plan, released by six departments in Beijing including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), has set a target for China’s total computing power to reach 300 EFLOPS by 2025. EFLOPS, equal to one quintillion floating-point operations per second, measures a computer’s speed. The MIIT revealed in August that China’s computing power has reached 197 EFLOPS this year, up from 180 EFLOPS in 2022. The ministry said it ranks China as second behind the United States, but did not elaborate on the scale of the US computing power it referenced.