China: Project Forest (AIIB-0001004)

Regions
  • East Asia and Pacific
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Countries
  • China
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Financial Institutions
  • Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.
Project Status
Proposed
Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.
Bank Risk Rating
B
Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."
Voting Date
Dec 1, 2025
Date when project documentation and funding is reviewed by the Board for consideration and approval. Some development banks will state a "board date" or "decision date." When funding approval is obtained, the legal documents are accepted and signed, the implementation phase begins.
Borrower
ZData Intelligent Valley Limited
A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.
Sectors
  • Communications
  • Energy
  • Infrastructure
The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.
Investment Type(s)
Equity
The categories of the bank investment: loan, grant, guarantee, technical assistance, advisory services, equity and fund.
Investment Amount (USD)
$ 40.00 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Loan Amount (USD)
$ 40.00 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Bank Documents
Primary Source

Original disclosure @ AIIB website

Updated in EWS Nov 1, 2025

Disclosed by Bank Sep 2, 2025

Contribute Information
Can you contribute information about this project?
Contact the EWS Team

Project Description
If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.

As stated by the AIIB, the objective of this project is to expand digital infrastructure in Asia by financing ZData's development of high-performance, energy-efficient data centers, increasing regional IT capacity, and accelerating renewable energy adoption in the sector.

The project consists of a potential equity investment of up to USD40 million in ZData as part of their Series C funding round. The equity injection will support ZData's capital expenditure plans, facilitating the expansion of its data center operations both within China and across Southeast Asia.

Investment Description
Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.
Private Actors Description
A Private Actor is a non-governmental body or entity that is the borrower or client of a development project, which can include corporations, private equity and banks. This describes the private actors and their roles in relation to the project, when private actor information is disclosed or has been further researched.

As stated by the AIIB, ZData is a leading third-party data center developer and operator in China with capacity in service of 547MW (22 data centers) as of 2024, and over 1.0GW projected capacity to be in service by end of 2025. ZData is one of the few players in China capable of building, operating and maintaining hyperscale data centers, and owns four out of the only eight hyperscale data center parks each exceeding 500MW in frontier provinces (Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hebei and Ningxia).

Private Actor 1 Private Actor 1 Role Private Actor 1 Sector Relation Private Actor 2 Private Actor 2 Role Private Actor 2 Sector
- - - - ZDATA Technologies Co., Ltd. Client Communications

Contact Information
This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.

AIIB Team Leader:

Catherine Han - Investment Officer
Email: catherine.han@aiib.org

Client - ZData Intelligent Valley Limited:

Xiaotong Xu - Finance Manager
Email: xuxiaotong@cnispgroup.com

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

You can submit an information request for project information at: https://www.aiib.org/en/contact/information-request/index.html

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF AIIB

The AIIB has established the Accountability Mechanism for Project-Affected People (PPM). The PPM provides Òan opportunity for an independent and impartial review of submissions from Project-affected people who believe they have been or are likely to be adversely affected by AIIBÕs failure to implement the ESP in situations when their concerns cannot be addressed satisfactorily through Project level GRMs or AIIB Management processes.Ó Two or more project-affected people can file a complaint. Under the current AIIB policy, when the bank co-finances a project with another development bank, it may apply the other bank's standards. You can refer to the Project Summary Information document to find out which standards apply. You can learn more about the PPM and how to file a complaint at: https://www.aiib.org/en/about-aiib/who-we-are/project-affected-peoples-mechanism/how-we-assist-you/index.html

The complaint submission form can be accessed in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, Chinese, English, Tagalog, Hindi, Nepali, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu. The submission form can be found at: https://www.aiib.org/en/about-aiib/who-we-are/project-affected-peoples-mechanism/submission/index.html

How it works

How it works