AWS is rolling out a new cloud region in Ningxia, China, in a move to expand its local offering. 

The two availability zones, comprising at least one data center each, will be operated by local provider, Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology (NWCD). The new region will support 31 AWS tools and services.

The alliance between the two companies enables Amazon to meet the country’s stringent legal requirements, and is in many ways identical to the deal it struck with Sinnet in order to keep its Beijing region online.

108 Tibetan-style Buddhist Dagobas in Xiakou Mountain, Ningxia province of China
Tibetan-style Buddhist Dagobas in Xiakou Mountain, Ningxia province of China – Thinkstock

Flexing the knee

In the summer, AWS sparked fears that it could be leaving the Chinese market due to the country’s hardline data sovereignty laws, which include the ban on foreign companies owning critical infrastructure assets and new, stricter cyber security laws announced earlier this year.

Instead of jumping ship, or risk having to hand over proprietary source code, the company chose to sell some of its assets to its longstanding Chinese partner, Sinnet.

The decision was echoed by other cloud providers, with Microsoft and IBM having partnered with China’s 21Vianet Group, and Apple building its first Chinese data center in collaboration with the Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd (GCBD).