The most crowded city in China, Shanghai, has been looking for ways to use a metaverse in public services in the next few years. The Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology for the city has a five-year development plan for the industry of electronic information that listed four frontiers for exploration- out of which one of them is the metaverse.
According to a report from CNBC, the paper went on to call for the promotion of the use of metaverse in business offices, public services, industrial manufacturing, social leisure, electronic games, and production safety. The commission has major plans of encouraging further study- with the development of underlying technologies, such as real-time interactions, sensors, and blockchain technology.
Shanghai to be the new hub for metaverse
China, and by extension, Shanghai’s interest in new technology has been pretty unwavering in the last couple of years, and its efforts to establish a central bank digital currency, along with the use of digital biometric hardware wallets for the virtual yuan have stratified it as a leader in the issuing of a CBDC.
In March, the State Council in China maintained its five-year development plan that included several of the same fronts for exploration- which Shanghai would focus on. As reported by Cointelegraph, the term blockchain was used for the very first time in the 14th five-year plan of China, a document that would push out a blueprint for the economic goals of the country for the next five years- which runs all the way from 2021 to 2025.
The metaverse has slowly turned into a major point of interest for many major companies in recent months- most of which have their branches or eastern headquarters in Shanghai.