Even though China has a ban against cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs), a new report by China.org indicates that the country is currently leading the world in blockchain projects, and accounts for at least 25 per cent of all ongoing blockchain projects.
The report says that China has at least 263 blockchain projects on the go at present. China, today is using Distributed Ledger Technology across a range of industries including financial services, public services, healthcare, supply chains, smart manufacturing, and logistics.
The chief editor at Blockdata, Zhang Feixue, explains:
The main strength of blockchain is in decentralized data management […] it can serve the real economy in terms of circulation and distribution. In the field of industrial economy, blockchain allows various assets to flow in the digital world, so it is a real gateway to digitalization for industries.”
Most governments around the world now are focussing more on formulating regulations for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, but China has been the most pronounced country in this regard. The country’s regulators, in September 2017, shut down several fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchanges and declared ICOs as illegal. This is becoming a matter of concern among those who had thought that this would impact blockchain innovation in the world’s most populous country, negatively.
However, two years later crypto exchanges and ICOs have relocated to greener pastures, but the Chinese government is leading the rest of the world in its plans to develop blockchain technology without cryptocurrencies in order to utilize the other use cases of blockchain.
That being said, reports have also emerged which indicate that the country’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) was developing a blockchain-based digital Chinese Yuan.
Inspite of the ban on ICOs, the country is reportedly spending a massive amount of money to finance blockchain-related projects. The former director of the Institute of Financial Sciences at China’s Ministry of Finance told local media outlet Ifeng, that blockchain was an irreversible historical trend.
The report notes that there are at least 615 blockchain companies in China with over 80 percent of them having been founded between 2016 and 2018 who targeting the financial industry. Chinese internet titans Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have gone further to develop their own blockchain initiatives.
