ISO/IEC JTC1, a joint technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, approved a China-led proposal in early June for the establishment of an IoT and Blockchain Research Group after a one month-long international voting , according to a report from Science and Technology Daily.

In the past, most of China’s standards were based on international ones but still lagged far behind. And now the situation has changed. This initiative signals that China will take the lead in devising standards in IoT and blockchain industries and secures a greater say in the integrated development of the new generation of information technologies.

The newly-established research group is chaired by Dr. Jie Shen, general team leader of the National IoT Foundation Standards Working Group and is comprised of experts from over ten countries including the United States, British, Germany and France.

They will focus on analyzing the current IoT and blockchain markets, as well as their international standards in the coming year, and set out to create new international standards of blockchain-based IoT solutions. Meanwhile, the research group will work with relevant international standards bodies to jointly develop international standards for IoT and blockchain and to delve into the industrial applications.

She Jie said IoT and blockchain technologies are developing at a very fast pace globally. In recent years, China has achieved major results in establishing national and international standards in IoT and blockchain space. For example, China’s Internet of Things Reference Architecture (IoT RA), namely the ISO/IEC 30141, has passed its last round of international voting for the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) in early June with an approval rating of 88%.

Establishing standards for blockchain-based IoT solutions will deliver many advantages. On one hand, blockchain technology is able to provide a reliable distributed credit guarantee mechanism for the large-scale IoT adoption and to fully exploit IoT devices’ data value; on the other hand , IoT can offer a large number of use cases and high-value data resources for blockchain industry.

In addition, China expects to complete a comprehensive framework for blockchain standards and have its national blockchain standardization committee in place by the end of this year, according to according to an official from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.