China is preparing for another blockchain technology move after promising to train half a million new “experts” to work in the sector.
Blockchain was identified as a growth sector by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018. In the years that followed, blockchain salaries have exploded in the country.
In recent years, China’s interest in blockchain has slowed. But Beijing seems to want to stop it.
According to China Youth Daily, Beijing opened a new National Blockchain Research Center last week after plans were announced for the opening of the center.
The Center Is Expected To Train “500,000 Blockchain Professionals”.
It was also said to enable blockchain technology to play a “central role” in China’s “digital economy“. The center was created with the Ministry of Science and Technology and instructed to work in coordination with universities and research institutes across the country.
IT Companies Will Also Be Asked To Work With The Center.
China’s Recent Blockchain Transformation Beijing also announced plans to launch a “national” blockchain network solution.
This solution, as the ministry puts it, will unify existing blockchain protocols and “provide support to other industries”. Professor Zheng Zhi Ming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Aerospace University said the center should address the problem of “blockchain islands”.
Zheng explained that these “islands” have emerged as various companies and sectors have built their own individual, closed-chain blockchain networks over the past few years. China banned most crypto-related activities in a nationwide crackdown in 2017 and 2021. Developers are therefore unable to work on decentralized public networks like Ethereum.
Instead, Blockchain Experts Should Work On Private Networks.
This phenomenon has effectively excluded Chinese businesses from the crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) sectors.Zheng spoke of the “unequal sub-technology network”.
The academic also said that a “fragmented technology ecology” has emerged, involving “different blockchain applications”. The professor said:
“The phenomenon of ‘blockchain islands’ is becoming increasingly serious. This new kind of information island phenomenon has seriously hindered the development of the digital economy.”