Water. The west is really dry. We could throw in data lines as well but it’s really bottlenecked by water. Actually the only place in China with water in abundance is southeast China.
Also they really don’t have the chips to supply those data centers, and the government isn’t so crazy to go that aggressive on AI, they have lots of other priorities as well.
Chinese data centers like to use air cooled chillers for cooling, not evaporative coolers. It's simple because power for the chillers is cheaper than water for the evaporative coolers. The opposite is true in the US
For example see the data centers in china's inner mongolia region, china's data center Hub like Virginia is in the US, where Deepseek is building a data Center campus
Evaporative cooling is a matter of convenience and cost, not a necessity. Other cooling technologies can be used. Intel has already proven a closed-loop system can work just as well.
One of China's big sources of power is hydroelectric such as the Three Gorges Dam, so if you want electricity and water in one place, then there it is.
Also they really don’t have the chips to supply those data centers, and the government isn’t so crazy to go that aggressive on AI, they have lots of other priorities as well.