New Chinese Blockchain Pivot as Beijing Vows to Train 500,000 ‘Experts’

Blockchain China

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper is a British journalist and features writer who has worked at Cryptonews.com since 2018. He has written for media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, and Chosun Ilbo. He has also worked...

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Last updated: 

October 23, 2023

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China is gearing up for another blockchain technology push after promising to train half a million new “experts” to work in the sector.

Blockchain was earmarked as a growth sector by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018.

In the years that followed, blockchain salaries ballooned in the nation.

But in recent years, Chinese blockchain fervor has slowed.

Beijing appears keen to halt this, however.

Per the China Youth Daily, Beijing has opened a new National Blockchain Research Center, after plans to launch the center were unveiled last week.

The center has been charged with training “500,000 blockchain professionals.” 

It has also been told to ensure blockchain technology plays “a central part” in the Chinese “digital economy.”

The center has been created in conjunction with the Ministry of Science and Technology.

And it has been instructed to work in tandem with universities and research institutes nationwide.

IT companies will also be asked to work alongside the center.

China’s Latest Blockchain Pivot: Why the Urgency?

Beijing has also unveiled plans to launch a “national” blockchain network solution.

This solution, the ministry said, will connect existing blockchain protocols and “provide support for other industries.”

Professor Zheng Zhi Ming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed that the center needed to tackle the issue of “blockchain islands.”

Zheng explained that these “islands” had emerged due to the fact that various companies and sectors had spent the past few years constructing their own, individual, closed-chain blockchain networks.

China banned most forms of crypto-related activity in nationwide crackdowns conducted in 2017 and 2021.

As such, developers cannot work on decentralized public networks such as Ethereum.

Nineteen months after China banned crypto, more signs have emerged that its citizens flout the prohibition and continue to buy and sell digital assets https://t.co/jHi3QIdd57

— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) May 8, 2023

Instead, blockchain professionals must work on private networks.

This phenomenon has effectively excluded Chinese businesses from the crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) sectors.

Zheng spoke of an “uneven underlying technology network.”

The academic also said a “fragmented technology ecology” had emerged, featuring “different blockchain applications.”

The professor said:

“The phenomenon of ‘blockchain islands’ is becoming more and more serious. This new type of information island phenomenon has seriously hindered the development of the digital economy.”

But the academic claimed:

“Building the National Blockchain Technology Center […] will significantly enhance [Chinese] innovation capabilities and core competitiveness. It will help China take the high ground in global digital economy development.”