Apple to build first data centre in China

Apple Inc. will establish its first data center in China to speed up services such as iCloud for local users and abide by laws that require global companies to store information within the country.

The new facility, which will be entirely driven by renewable energy, will be built and run in partnership with Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data, Apple said in a messaged statement.

Apple aims to migrate Chinese users’ information, now stored elsewhere, to the new facility in coming months, it said in a messaged statement.

The data center was partly driven by new measures that bolster control over the collection and movement of Chinese users’ data, and can also grant the government unprecedented access to foreign companies’ technology.

Forcing companies to store information within the country has already led some to tap cloud computing providers with more local server capacity.

“The addition of this data center will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services while also complying with newly passed regulations,” the company said in its statement. “Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.”

Apple’s partner was co-founded by the government of Guizhou, which has begun promoting the mountainous central province as the country’s data center capital.

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