February 10, 2026
Windmills vs. server mills
China's Data Center Boom: A View from Zhangjiakou (2025)
Wind turbines, server barns, and bunker talk — green dream or ghost racks
TLDR: China’s building a major data center hub near Beijing’s wind farms, but only a third of the power is green and reports hint at overbuilding and sketchy permits. Commenters split between “put it in bunkers” security fears and “212 MW isn’t huge” pragmatism, with greenwashing jokes flying.
Zhangjiakou, the windy neighbor to Beijing, is suddenly the “server suburb” in China’s big push to move data centers out of pricey cities and closer to cheap power. The report says billions are pouring in and racks are rising fast, but only about 30% of the electricity is truly “green,” with the rest leaning on coal and gas to keep the lights on 24/7. Cue the comment drama.
The thread split into two camps immediately. The bunker brigade showed up first: one top-voted take urged putting the whole thing underground for protection — then nervously asked if “we” do the same. It sparked a wave of memes: “Great Firewall? Meet the Great Server Basement,” and “Servers by day, shelters by night.” Meanwhile, the numbers nerds calmly ran the math: Zhangjiakou’s annual use equals roughly 212 megawatts — big, but “not hyperscaler huge” compared to US AI giants. Translation: impressive, but not endgame.
Underneath the jokes, a sharper debate: Is this smart planning or another overbuild? Reports of shady permits and half-empty halls had commenters calling it “real-estate rebooted with racks,” while others argued proximity to Beijing and renewables make it one of the few clusters that might actually work. The vibe: wind farms vs. server farms… and maybe a few ghost racks in between.
Key Points
- •Zhangjiakou, near Beijing, is a key cluster in China’s EDWC plan due to low latency and access to wind and solar power.
- •Official data show 45.5 billion yuan (~$6 billion) invested in data centers under EDWC.
- •Xinhua reports Zhangjiakou data centers used 1.859 billion kWh (+43.47% YoY), with about 30% from green electricity (574 million kWh).
- •Despite proximity to renewables, data centers rely heavily on coal/gas for reliability, highlighting integration challenges.
- •Permitting has faced alleged bribery and speculative overbuilding, leading to underutilized or empty facilities in some areas.