China Bets Big on the Metaverse with Three-Year Action Plan

• China has launched a three-year metaverse action plan.
• The plan follows a series of similar initiatives in the country.
• The country aims to achieve global influence in metaverse adoption and applications.

Despite imposing a blanket ban on all crypto-related activities, China has embarked on an ambitious three-year journey to expand its domestic metaverse industry and incubate three to five metaverse companies with “global influence” by 2025.

China’s General Offices for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, among other state agencies, published a three-year action plan to steer the high-potential metaverse industry.

Harnessing New-Generation Information Technologies

Setting its sights on major innovative breakthroughs, the action plan intends to leverage a range of new-generation technologies, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) concepts.

The 2023 to 2025 metaverse blueprint focuses on achieving five key goals that will become a significant growth pole in China’s digital economy, including:

• Developing a 3D interactive industrial metaverse.
• Constructing advanced technological and industrial systems.
• Creating immersive interactive digital life applications.
• Establishing a safe and credible industrial governance system.
• Building systematic and complete industrial support.

By 2025, the plan anticipates a future where the physical and digital worlds seamlessly merge and also underscores the inevitable application of the metaverse concept in various industries, such as tourism, automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, and home appliances.

Betting Heavy on the Metaverse

The Chinese government has been demonstrating its interest in tapping into the potential of the metaverse concept and its applications for a while now.

In July 2022, the Shanghai government promised to set up a fund worth 10 billion yuan in assets to focus on metaverse development under a five-year plan. Two months later, the Henan Provincial government announced its goal to develop a 100-billion-yuan metaverse industry by 2025.

Regarding investor sentiment, the Chinese metaverse market reportedly generated around $780 million in investments , where experts projected it to be worth $5.8 trillion by 2030.

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