In China, the establishment of a Blockchain Committee sees the central bank, Tencent, and Baidu jointly setting national standards.

In late October last year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping openly stated that "blockchain should be regarded as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, and should be considered as one of the important cores for the future development direction of the country." Since then, the Chinese government and its local governments have been more extensively involved in the blockchain field to promote domestic startups.

On April 13th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China released an official document, announcing the establishment of a technical committee consisting of 15 organizations to formulate national standards for blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The committee is named the "National Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Standardization Technical Committee."

Standardizing Blockchain Technology: Half of the Representatives are Official

In order to ensure that the national standards set by the committee comply with current laws and promote the development of various industries, the committee includes 15 organizations from political, financial, industrial, academic, and research backgrounds, including the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Tencent, Baidu, and Zhejiang University.

The committee's current list includes 71 people from the aforementioned organizations and will be chaired by Chen Zhaoxiong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Di Gang, Deputy Director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, will serve as one of the five vice chairs of the committee. Interestingly, the footnote at the end states, "The proportion of committee members representing public interest: 1/2," suggesting that in terms of public interest equating to party intentions, the government's controllable proportion is 50%. Given the current situation of the state advancing and the private sector retreating, most of the influential privately-owned enterprises are to some extent regulated by the government. It is not an exaggeration to say that this list reflects the Chinese government's intention to control blockchain technology.

Cracking Down on Cryptocurrency, Promoting Blockchain

Since last year, China has not only been promoting blockchain technology but also continuously cracking down on cryptocurrency exchanges and virtual currencies. In a report earlier this year, on March 22nd, "International Consumer Rights Day," the People's Bank of China specifically issued a warning against virtual currency trading platforms with graphics and text. In addition to mentioning the crackdown on exchanges and ICOs by the Chinese government in September 2017, it also highlighted several investment traps that consumers often fall into.

Furthermore, China has been actively promoting the development of its central bank digital currency. In early January this year, it claimed to have completed the "top-level design" and will follow the principles of being steady, secure, and controllable in the next stage. It will reasonably select pilot verification regions, scenarios, and service scopes, continuously optimize and enrich the functions of DCEP (Digital Currency/Electronic Payment), and steadily digitize the renminbi in practice.