Tencent said it would build most of its planned data centers in Asia, including South Korea and Thailand, as well as the Middle East, reports Nikkei citing Poshu Yeung, Tencent Cloud International's senior vice president.

Tencent operates 20 data centers outside China, with the first batch launched in Europe and the U.S. But amid growing political tensions between China and Western countries, Yeung said the company plans to add 30% to 50% more data centers by the end of this year mostly in the Asian region.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Asia has experienced fast growth in video conferencing, e-commerce, online education, gaming and livestreaming as people spend more time at home.

Among Asian countries, Indonesia is one of the hottest battlegrounds for cloud services. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook have announced plans to build their first data centers in the country. Tencent also has a plan to open two data centers in Indonesia by the end of this year.

Tencent was the fourth largest player in the Asia-Pacific cloud market after Alibaba, Amazon and Microsoft, according to a 2019 report by research company Gartner.