Chinese companies join forces in metaverse collaboration with Tencent, Ant Group, Huawei, and others

Members of the working group come from Chinese digital behemoths including Baidu, Tencent, Huawei, and Ant Group, according to the country’s top industry administration.

In an effort to spearhead the expansion of the emerging metaverse business, the world’s number two economy—China—has established a working group to advocate for sector-wide standards.

Officials from the government, universities, and businesses have come together to create a working group, according to a notification published on Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Huawei, Ant Group, Tencent, Baidu, NetEase, and Sense Time are among the Chinese IT heavyweights included in the working group.

The formation of the task group is in line with the government’s plans to establish industry standards for the metaverse. The MIIT said in a September report that stakeholders might benefit from working together to establish common standards for the metaverse, including a common vocabulary and reference architecture.

The government agency went on to say that the term “metaverse” is still up for debate among researchers, businesses, and universities. “The concept has drifted far from its practical value due to the intense speculation fueled by some capital and businesses leveraging the popularity of the metaverse,” the ministry stated. “This does impede the growth of the metaverse industry, to some degree.”

Despite its prohibition on cryptocurrencies, China plans to continue using blockchain technology and is actively encouraging the creation of decentralized apps and non-fungible tokens. An official document from December said that the MIIT intends to create strategy papers that outline the future of Web3 development.

A number of municipalities made commitments last year to foster the growth of the metaverse sector. The southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, which was once a major center for cryptocurrency mining until China banned the practice, said in August that it plans to expand its metaverse business to a 250 billion yuan ($35.1 billion) market by 2025.

Also in August, Shandong province announced its intentions to expand metaverse-related projects inside the province, with the goal of reaching a 150 billion yuan market size by 2025.

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