Rows of cabinets by the seaside in Shantou are buzzing, and the server indicator lights in the data center keep flashing. What is being processed here is not traditional foreign trade orders, but AI call requests from Southeast Asian developers - once the electricity is converted into a word element and exported along the submarine cable, the value jumps from 0.5 yuan to 11 yuan. This new channel of not exporting electricity, retaining computing power within the country, and selling digital services globally is becoming a new undercurrent in China's foreign trade.

In July 2026, the total weekly call volume of global AI big models reached 46.7 trillion tokens, and the weekly call volume of Chinese big models reached 23.45 trillion tokens, ranking first in the world for ten consecutive weeks. The commercial feasibility of expanding the word element overseas has been verified by the market, and an AI era export path that highlights China's energy advantages is gradually becoming clear.

Building systematic competitiveness

The Shantou Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Experimental Zone has taken the lead in opening up the first closed-loop system for word elements to go global in China. Users from multiple countries and regions in Southeast Asia are calling on the Shantou produced word element service, with a clear economic account behind it: the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour in China is about 0.5 yuan, and after converting it into word elements, the export value reaches 11 yuan, achieving a value jump of about 22 times. This mode relies on the deep coupling of the three advantages of energy, open source and industrial chain - the energy end offshore wind power direct supply data center, which lowers the unit power cost and matches the overseas green power access standards; Global deployment of domestically produced open-source models and scheduling systems, eliminating adaptation losses; The industrial chain relies on more than half of the country's international submarine cable resources and cooperates with the pilot policy of data processing to form a complete closed loop of overseas data entry, local computing power processing, and result export.

The export form undergoes a qualitative change

The essence of Ci Yuan's overseas expansion is a repricing of China's energy advantages in the AI era. Electricity cannot be transmitted across borders, but computing power can. The second phase of the Guangdong East Data Center will be put into operation in September 2026, with a green power access ratio of 80%. The local area is exploring the direct connection of offshore wind power to the data center model. A scholar from Tsinghua University pointed out that the remote calling mode of lexical elements does not rely on local assets, and cross-border digital transmission is subject to electronic tax exemption rules. After overseas developers deeply embed themselves in the domestic model ecosystem, they will form tool and business path dependencies. Compared with one-time software licensing, long-term high-frequency calling can build more stable global cooperation relationships. Energy policy experts at Xiamen University believe that only when energy is cheap and clean enough, computing power is strong enough, and data security is compliant, can large-scale keyword export capabilities be formed. Keywords: Infrastructure News、Infrastructure

Integration of standards and scale

Facing medium to long term development, there are two essential questions for Ci Yuan's overseas expansion. One is the issue of energy storage costs - the current bottleneck in the consumption of wind and solar power is essentially the high cost of energy storage. The most feasible path is to rapidly expand the industry scale through policy guidance and use economies of scale to dilute costs. The second issue is the issue of standard discourse power - relying on the accumulation of billions of word element call data, first unifying domestic word element measurement, cross-border compliance, and green computing industry standards, and then promoting relevant rules to enter the international standard system, we can transform the advantage of service scale into standard discourse power, achieving a qualitative change from selling computing power and word elements to setting standards and rules. As of now, China's daily average usage of keywords has exceeded 140 trillion yuan, its computing infrastructure continues to improve, and its policy system is gradually maturing. This intangible export channel of electricity value will further expand and become a new business card for China to participate in global economic cooperation.Editor/Gao Xue