Shanghai, China’s biggest city and financial center, plans to build a blockchain infrastructure by the end of 2025 and establish links with Hong Kong and Singapore for application in fields such as digital assets, transportation, industrial internet-of-things, supply chain finance, and carbon management, according to a government report issued on Monday. The report gave no details on the amounts to be invested.
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Fast facts
- The Shanghai plan includes building a blockchain network and dedicated computing power clusters that support the city’s blockchain ambitions in managing local government affairs, public services, and real-world economy applications.
- Shanghai aims to be a global leader in the shift to digital-based economies, according to the plan drafted by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.
- It follows others released by the city related to Web3 technologies, or those needed to evolve the internet into a network built around blockchains, non-fungible tokens and the metaverse.
- In June 2023, Shanghai released a three-year plan to revamp the city’s manufacturing industries using Web3 technologies. Later in July, the city set a goal to build its culture and tourism metaverse projects into an industry generating an annual revenue of US$6.9 billion by the end of 2025.
- Other cities in China have also announced blockchain ambitions. The capital Beijing launched what it called “the country’s first megacity government blockchain infrastructure” in January 2023 to pool data from more than 80 local government departments on a blockchain network. The city also set up a national blockchain research center in May for investigating industrial uses of blockchain technology.
See related article: Back to the physical: China metaverse seeks to boost real-world economy