May 20, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China (MIIT) just released a white paper on blockchain industrial development. According to Yu Jianing, the director of industrial economic institute of the information center of MIIT, it is the first official blockchain industrial white paper released by China’s authority.

The white paper indicated that, by the end of March 2018, there are 456 enterprises take blockchain as their main business in China. This advanced technology has been adopted by different industries, from upstream hardware manufacturing, platform services, security, to the downstream industrial technology application services. Enterprises in investment and financing, media and human resources services areas also applied blockchain in their business which supports the healthy development of blockchain industry.

The white paper also analyses the business type of starups in the blockchain industry and underlines that most companies focus on the industrial application service. By the end of March 2018, The number of blockchain starups that provide financial blockchain solutions hits 86 while 109 blockchain starups target the real economy.

From the distribution of blockchain starups we can see, Beijing Shanghai,Guangdong, Zhejiang are the top regions in China, over 80% of the blockchain companies located in these areas.

The white paper also listed 6 development tendencies of blockchain industry in China:

1. Blockchain is the forefront of global tech revolution which opens up the new international competition tracks.

2. Blockchain will be the new hot spot for innovative start up business, tech convergence may expand new application scenarios.

3. Blockchain will be broadly applied in real economy within 3 years and may provide key supports to the establishment of Digital China.

4. Blockchain may set up a new “platform economy”to open up a new era of sharing economy.

5. Blockchain may speed up the process of “credible digitization”and drive finance to be more substantive to support the real economy.

6. The supervision and standard system for blockchain would be further completed, the foundation of industrial development will be further strengthened.