Blockchain’s biggest fan? Red China

As of November, China led the world in new blockchain projects, with 263 in progress – which means the People’s Republic now accounts for one in four of all such work, says China Daily.

Citing local data service provider Blockdata in Beijing, the newspaper goes on to point out how in Deloitte’s 2018 global Blockchain survey, half of respondents in China said the technology was already being used in their organisation, compared with only 14% in the United States.

There is also the fact that locally-headquartered ecommerce giant Alibaba is reported to have been using Blockchain in areas such as public welfare, food and healthcare since 2016 – and with 90 Blockchain-related patents, it ranked No 1 in the Top 100 Blockchain Enterprise Patent Rankings, followed by IBM’s at 89. Two other Chinese firms, Tencent and Baidu, also placed strongly in this table.

What’s intriguing is that Chinese use cases are being claimed to go beyond the usual prime Western area – financial services – and are instead being piloted in multiple industries, from the public sector to healthcare, supply chains, smart manufacturing and logistics, claims the report.

Plus, there are no less than 615 blockchain companies in China, with 82% of starting up since 2016, according to a report in December by Beijing think tank EO Intelligence it also quotes – though admittedly, this stat does say that one in two of them are working on the adoption of blockchain technology in the financial industry.

“The main strength of Blockchain is in decentralised data management,” it quotes Zhang Feixue, chief editor at Blockdata.

“It can serve the real economy in terms of circulation and distribution [and] in the field of industrial economy, blockchain allows various assets to flow in the digital world, so it is a real gateway to digitalisation for industries.”

China Daily is the main English language newspaper of the Chinese state.