The Shantou Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Pilot Zone announced on April 22 that Shantou has recently successfully completed the closed-loop verification of the entire “Token Going Global” process. As the first city-level practice in China, this marks the entry of Chinese tokens into a substantial implementation and verification phase.
The article states that tokens are the smallest computational units for large-scale models to process information, and are replacing traditional “raw computing power” to become the core metric for measuring intelligent computing capabilities and a new value carrier for the digital economy.
The recent market buzz surrounding “Token Going Global” largely focuses on “model going global”—Chinese companies deploy large-scale models overseas, while the underlying computing power and data centers are also located abroad. Domestic electricity and computing power are not truly exported in the form of tokens. True token going global hinges on transforming domestic electricity and computing power into tradable digital services through large-scale models.
To establish this seamless end-to-end closed loop, the industry generally faces two major pain points: First, cross-border latency bottlenecks. Real-time inference of large AI models has extremely stringent latency requirements, and cross-border transmission can easily add tens of milliseconds of delay. Second, obstacles to cross-border data flow. Token going global involves cross-border data transmission, and cross-border data flow has always been a regulatory focus.
Faced with this common challenge in the industry, Shantou has taken the lead in opening up a sea route that combines compliance and low latency by leveraging the dual advantages of its submarine optical cable landing station and the “processing with imported data” pilot policy.
Shantou has successfully completed the entire closed-loop process of “offshore data center → token production → overseas access → compliant data transmission”. Overseas users have successfully accessed the “Shantou-made” token service, marking the first time that Chinese AI technology and computing resources have been exported in the form of high-value-added digital services.
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With a green energy foundation and leading cost, Shantou boasts 60GW of offshore wind power resources. Low-cost green energy keeps the overall electricity price at an extremely low level. Its clean attributes, which fully comply with international ESG standards, provide a “green access certificate” for entering markets with strict carbon emission controls, such as the EU.
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Submarine cable channels with direct hardware connections. The Shantou International Submarine Cable Landing Station has multiple international submarine cables, carrying 52% of the country’s international export bandwidth. The network latency from Shantou to Singapore is as low as approximately 32.7 milliseconds, making it the fastest direct connection node in China to Southeast Asia, precisely meeting the rigid requirements of real-time inference for ultra-low latency.
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Institutional safeguards and compliance safeguards. The nationally approved pilot program for “data processing” provides a legal and compliant “front door” for enterprises to export their data and computing power overseas, fundamentally resolving compliance red lines in cross-border regulation.
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A natural link between overseas Chinese and the global community. Shantou is a century-old hometown of overseas Chinese, with over 15 million people of Chaoshan origin living abroad. This cultural network covering Southeast Asia provides a natural bridge integrating “technology + capital + market” for Token to expand its business overseas and connect with political and business resources.
At the infrastructure level, Shantou will steadily promote the construction of large-scale intelligent computing infrastructure, explore the “offshore wind power directly connected to data center” model, and build an underwater data center cluster in stages. By leveraging natural seawater cooling and direct green electricity supply, the overall electricity cost will be reduced to an extreme.
At the policy innovation level, relevant national departments have explicitly supported the Shantou Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Pilot Zone in carrying out cross-border data flow cooperation and building an international data exchange hub. Shantou is leveraging this institutional breakthrough to construct a more comprehensive institutional channel for the export of computing power and data.
