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The deployment sits within Hainan’s free-trade zone, where China has relaxed regulations to allow full foreign ownership of data center and telecom operations. The project supports Hainan’s push to become a maritime and tech innovation hub, integrating marine science, digital services, and offshore infrastructure.
China’s Hainan underwater data center is a monumental experiment—one embedded with technological ambition, sustainability goals, and geopolitical strategy. While challenges abound—from marine maintenance to cost structures—the potential upside in cooling efficiency, infrastructure scalability, and carbon reduction is profound.
It is regarded as a special area for China to comprehensively deepen economic reform and experiment with the highest level of opening-up policies. Hainan Free Trade Port is not a seaport in the usual sense, but the entire Hainan Island is regarded as a special economic development area.
The "Notice on Preferential Corporate Income Tax Policies for Hainan Free Trade Port" proposed that enterprises in encouraged industries registered and operated in Hainan Free Trade Port shall be subject to a reduced corporate income tax rate of 15%.
The legal aspect of this "Master Plan" was agreed as the "ASEAN Power Grid’s Roadmap for Integration" at the 20th AMEM Meeting in Bali on July 5, 2002.
Again, there was a specific focus on interconnection projects between individual member states, as highlighted during the 2002 meeting. In 2007, the APGCC (ASEAN Power Grid Consultative Committee) was established under HAPUA and is an advice committee dedicated to creating and maintaining a framework to create the APG.
In 1981, the first official discussions on the state of electricity grids within ASEAN began. This resulted in the creation of the "Heads of ASEAN Power Utilities/Authorities" group, otherwise known as HAPUA.
