Quick Summary:

• President of China says they should ‘seize the opportunity’ to adopt blockchain.
• China’s congress passes cryptography law, creating a regulatory and legal framework for blockchain adoption.
• More than 500 blockchain projects, including some of the largest Chinese banks and tech companies, have registered with the Chinese government.

Speaking as part of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, told the assembly that blockchain technology has a wide range of potential applications within China.

“We must take the blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies,” Xi said. “We must clarify the main direction, increase investment, focus on a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation.”

One day after the President’s speech, the 13th Congress in China passed a cryptography law that implements a regulatory and legal framework for commercial adoption of blockchain technology.

The Cyberspace Administration of China then published the identities of 506 projects that registered to conduct research and development in the blockchain space, including some of the largest banks and tech companies in China.

Since March, Six banks, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank by assets, and Ping An Bank, the banking arm of Ping An Insurance, have registered 14 blockchain projects.

Alibaba has registered a total of 90 blockchain-related patents, more than any other company in the world.

Tencent, the parent of messaging app WeChat, has been building a suite of blockchain services since 2017.

Baidu, the Chinese answer to Google, has announced that it aims to provide scalable infrastructure for blockchain services.

The Chinese government is also heavily investing in blockchain-related R&D, from communication to legal and land development use cases.