Chinese Local Gov’ts, Tech Firms Take Tentative Metaverse Steps

cryptonews.com:

Chinese government-run firms and local governments are starting to explore metaverse-related innovations – although they are proceeding with due caution, given the fact that the nation last year enacted its most stringent crypto crackdown to date.

With the rest of the tech world launching headfirst into the metaverse, Chinese players are now looking for a way to follow suit, albeit in a manner that will allow them to sidestep crypto.

Per the Securities Times, one of the first local governments to explore the notion of the metaverse was Shanghai, whose policy-forming Municipal Party Committee Economic Labor Conference made indirect reference to metaverse developments late last year.

The media outlet remarked that on December 21, the conference concluded that it needed to “guide enterprises” to “step up their research” of “important platforms” that enable “interaction between the virtual world and the real society in the future.”

The media outlet stated that this utterance was widely “considered to be the first positive statement made by a local government [body] about the metaverse.” It also mentioned that Shanghai has since followed up with more concrete metaverse pledges.

Indeed, the media agency noted, the term “metaverse” was used “multiple times” in the Shangai IT regulator’s latest tech and economic Five-Year Plan. The plan makes numerous mention of “the prospective deployment” of the metaverse, alongside quantum computing, third-generation semiconductors and 6G communications.

China has been keen to position itself as a world leader in blockchain innovation – with the technology championed by President Xi Jinping himself. However, Beijing wants its cake and wants to eat it, too: the model it favors is blockchain on