The expansion of word elements into the sea opens up a new track for digital trade

After the popularity of the "new three types" of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaics in the global market, China's digital service export track has welcomed a new category this year - tokens.

Lexicon is the smallest basic unit for computing and outputting big model data, and is an important yardstick for measuring intelligent computing power consumption and determining service value. Unlike goods trade relying on cross-border logistics, the overseas business of Ci Yuan has achieved full chain digital circulation, with lower trade costs, opening up a new path for China's digital economy globalization.

Institutional innovation takes the lead

Going global with keywords is a new track in digital trade. Multiple regions have taken the lead and continuously improved their policy systems, using institutional innovation to safeguard the bottom line of data security and unleash the vitality of cross-border digital services.

The Shantou Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Pilot Zone in Guangdong Province (hereinafter referred to as the "Overseas Chinese Pilot Zone") has been approved to carry out the pilot program of "data processing" in 2025. In order to strictly control cross-border data risks, the Overseas Chinese Experimental Zone implements physical isolation control for the full chain call of keywords: the large model computing power requirements of overseas users are connected to the special zone through a compliant cross-border dedicated line, and all inference and calculation processes are completed in a closed loop within the country; The platform calculates the service scale based on the consumption of keywords, and the calculation results are transmitted back to overseas terminals through international submarine cables. The raw data is not exported throughout the entire process.

Our word-of-mouth business focuses on overseas markets such as Southeast Asia, mainly serving enterprises in various Southeast Asian countries, while also covering the local Chinese working group with AI reasoning and computing power needs. ”Tang Hanlin, Chairman of Guizhou Data Treasure Network Technology Co., Ltd., which is conducting keyword element overseas business in the Overseas Chinese Experimental Zone, introduced that the company is jointly exploring intelligent recommendation and real-time inference services for commercial scenarios such as overseas independent stations and cross-border live streaming. The customers in these scenarios are mainly small and medium-sized e-commerce enterprises, content creators, and overseas trading companies.

Tang Hanlin introduced that in the "data not leaving the country" mode, policy compliance requirements are not shackles, but moats. Shantou has submarine cable resources directly connected to Southeast Asia and East Asia, with low latency and packet loss rate for overseas computing requests. After entering the "incoming data processing" zone, the task achieves closed-loop data calculation throughout the entire process, and the calculation results are returned to overseas users in real time along the same channel.

Relying on the policy dividends and the market opportunity of overseas computing power demand explosion, Shantou completed the closed-loop verification of the entire "Ci Yuan Going Global" chain at the end of April this year. At that time, the daily call volume was only 100 million Ci Yuan. After less than a month, the daily call volume has climbed to 10 billion Ci Yuan.

In addition to pilot projects, many regions have also introduced supporting industrial policies. The "15th Five Year Plan for the Development of High tech Industries in Hainan Province" was recently released, which clearly proposes the development of offshore data business and the exploration of new models for word element overseas services in the integration of data cross-border and artificial intelligence industries.

The top-level design is also strongly supporting the development of the "lexical economy". The Implementation Plan for Promoting the Construction of High Quality Industry Data Sets released by the National Data Administration proposes to explore new trading models such as word element trading, and build a quantifiable and priced data value system based on word elements.

Zhang Yao, founder of Data Trading Network, stated that from a market perspective, the promotion of word element trading is a key measure for China to seize the initiative in the global AI industry competition. The current global competition in AI is becoming increasingly fierce, and keywords have become the core circulation carrier of the industry. The discourse power of their trading rules and pricing system directly determines a country's position on the global AI track.

The traditional fragmented data packet trading and project-based service model cannot support a large-scale and standardized data element market. As a separable, measurable, traceable, and programmable value carrier, the core value of lexical elements lies in their ability to transform diverse data products and services into market "standard products" that can be efficiently circulated.

While new business models are rapidly expanding, the shortcomings of the supporting system are gradually becoming apparent. Chen Yuping, General Manager of Yande International Consulting Co., Ltd. Beijing Branch, found that there is a common problem of insufficient cross-border financial support in the industry when connecting with enterprise services. The prominent characteristics of small-scale, high-frequency, and high concurrency transactions in Ci Yuan require financial institutions to establish compliant, efficient, and cost controllable cross-border capital channels and smooth capital return mechanisms, fill in the gaps in industrial finance support, and support the large-scale development of Ci Yuan's overseas expansion, "said Chen Yuping.

Building the foundation of computing power system

The explosive growth of Ci Yuan's overseas expansion is due to the continuous empowerment of top-level national policies and the effective implementation of pilot projects in multiple regions, as well as the rigid gap in overseas computing power brought about by the expansion of the global AI industry. Compared to overseas markets, China has a complete digital infrastructure and a mature computing power industry chain, forming unique cost advantages in data center construction, green power supply, and computing power production.

At the 9th Digital China Construction Summit held in April this year, the National Data Administration announced that the high computing power role of the "East Data West Computing" project is becoming increasingly prominent. As of the end of the first quarter of this year, the scale of intelligent computing power in China has reached 1882EFLOPS (FP16), and the eight major national hubs of "East Data West Computing" have been built, accounting for over 80% of the country's intelligent computing scale. The construction of national level monitoring and scheduling platforms is accelerating, providing the best solutions for computing, storage, algorithm resource allocation, and network connection for users with different needs.

The rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry has driven exponential growth in global computing power demand, and computing power has become a key indicator for measuring the comprehensive digital strength of various countries. In order to solve the problem of universal and convenient application of computing power, and to enable computing power resources to be accessed and used efficiently like hydropower, China has gradually built a national integrated computing power network relying on the "East West Computing" national strategic project.

Relying on an integrated computing power network, standardized word element production factories are accelerating their implementation. Recently, the "Beijing No.1 Word Element Factory" of Softtek Information Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. has been officially put into operation. The project leader introduced that the base focuses on intelligent agent inference business verification, integrates advanced computing power scheduling technology and green energy control solutions, and forms a cross regional collaborative model of "Beijing sets standards, Zhangjiakou green electricity ensures production capacity", relying on Zhangjiakou New Energy Computing Power Base to ensure stable and highly elastic supply of keywords.

Unlike traditional single point computing power centers, the new type of lexical element production relies on the advantages of national computing power network interconnection to achieve dynamic allocation and collaborative production of computing power across regions. This is also the core confidence of lexical element going global: it is not simply exporting large model products overseas, but attracting global developers to rely on domestic integrated computing power networks to carry out model research and development, inference and operation, achieving independent and controllable standards, production capacity, and scheduling systems, firmly supporting the global AI underlying computing power supply.

Dou Dejing, Chief Scientist of Beidian Intelligence, stated that the demand in overseas markets is upgrading from "point tools" to "systematic solutions". Customers are not looking for an algorithm, but for complete capabilities that can solve real business problems - from computing infrastructure to industry models, from data governance to security compliance, from deployment and implementation to continuous operation.

The current demand for overseas computing power continues to rise, and a large number of overseas users choose to conduct AI model training business in China, or directly call on mature domestic computing resources to complete word element generation work. At the same time, domestic computing service institutions are also accelerating their internationalization layout, exporting mature computing architectures, technological systems, and standardized operation and maintenance models to various overseas locations.

Nowadays, global AI competition has bid farewell to the shallow stage of simply competing model parameters and entered the comprehensive competition stage of computing power supply and underlying infrastructure. In this context, China has explored a new AI sea going paradigm: jump out of the single mode of traditional product output and focus on the global output of core digital infrastructure. 'Let the world's AI run on China's computing power' is no longer an industry slogan, but a steadily advancing and continuously landing industrial reality.

Empowering power advantages

Our country's leading position in the global market for word elements is not only a result of technological innovation, but also a concentrated manifestation of the advantages of new infrastructure construction. With the intensive landing of data centers and intelligent computing centers, the regional electricity load has significantly increased. Power companies are promoting the transformation and upgrading of distribution networks, and synchronously launching exclusive power supply services that are suitable for the computing power industry, promoting the acceleration of the computing power industry.

The cost advantage of green electricity further amplifies the competitiveness of the word element in going global. According to a case released by Southern Power Grid in March this year, in new energy rich areas such as Guizhou and Yunnan, through market-oriented electricity trading, the on grid electricity price for wind and photovoltaic power is about 0.3 yuan/kWh. Based on the performance of current mainstream models in high-intensity inference tasks, the average power consumption for generating 1 million tokens ranges from 15 kWh to 20 kWh, with an electricity cost of only a few yuan. On the revenue side, the international market prices token outputs of similar quality at $60 to $168 per million tokens. After deducting equipment depreciation, bandwidth, research and development costs, the export revenue advantage is very prominent.

Many overseas countries have tight power supply and weak computing infrastructure, making it difficult to support large-scale AI iteration. They highly rely on external computing power procurement, opening up vast market space for China's vocabulary to go global. The domestic electricity supply is abundant and the price is stable. The installed capacity of green electricity is increasing year by year, and the long-term cost advantage will continue to expand.

Professor Wang Yiwei from the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China stated that the confidence of Ci Yuan in going global ultimately lies not in a single technological breakthrough, but in the systematic advantages of the entire infrastructure system. The supply chain and industrial chain are independently controllable, combined with the deep integration of electricity, computing power, and networks, which is the concentrated realization of China's competitive advantages in the AI era.

As global AI competition shifts from 'whose model is bigger' to 'whose supply is more stable', China not only exports computing power service products to the outside world, but also synchronously outputs industry standards, rule systems, and complete computing power infrastructure solutions. Ci Yuan is becoming the "digital crude oil" of the intelligent era, relying on perfect software and hardware support, institutional system, and new infrastructure, China is steadily growing into a core infrastructure supplier for the global artificial intelligence industry.