Quick Note - Reports on China ramping up AI investment... - ...Likely a short-term catalyst for domestic AI value chain

Research evidence excerpt

Quick Note - Reports on China ramping up AI investment... - ...Likely a short-term catalyst for domestic AI value chain

Global Markets Research

Reports on China ramping up AI investment... 9 June 2026

EQUITY: TECHNOLOGY

...Likely a short-term catalyst for domestic AI value chain Research Analysts

China Technology

Bing Duan - NIHKQuick Note bing.duan1@nomura.com

+852 2252 2141

What happened? Ethan Zhang - NIHK

Bloomberg News reported (link) today that China plans to invest USD295bn (~RMB2tn) ethan.zhang@nomura.com

over the next five years to build data centers across the country. If other infrastructure +852 2252 2157

investments such as electricity network were to be considered, the total investment could

reach RMB5tn (news). According to the Bloomberg News report, key government

agencies, including the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), are

drafting a blueprint to erect a network of inter-connected computing hubs across the

country; state firms such as China Mobile (941 HK, Buy) and China Telecom (728 HK,

Neutral) will operate the bulk of the data centers and ensure that these data centers

are connected. Moreover, the news also mentioned that the government’s strategy

involves relying on local suppliers including Huawei Technologies (unlisted) for key

technologies, such as AI chips.

We note that the ‘RMB2tn’ plan was not the first to appear in discussions, as there was

a news report on Jan 2025 (link) mentioning the government’s potential investment plans

around data infrastructure over a period of five years, and the framework of building a

national wide computing network was also discussed.

Nomura’s view

Although the ‘RMB2tn investment plan’ is not a brand-new idea to us, we think this might