June 15 (Cointime) - Beijing has established China's first patent pool for metaverse, which currently contains approximately 170 metaverse-related patents. The initiative is part of the city's plan to attract more than 100 metaverse companies by the end of 2024. China is interested in the metaverse's potential benefits for real-world industries, and the government has released a Web 3.0 whitepaper outlining its plans to develop the metaverse industry. Despite China's national metaverse strategy, some of its largest technology companies, such as Tencent and Baidu, appear to be losing interest in the metaverse.

China's regulators have prohibited cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICO), making it challenging to promote public blockchains like Ethereum and Solana. Instead, they prefer private or permissioned networks managed by a single or a few identified entities, which are easier to supervise. However, China's crypto regulations may be open for revisions in the future, particularly since Hong Kong implemented new rules for trading cryptocurrencies on June 1. Meanwhile, the US, South Korea, and Japan pose challenges to China's metaverse ambitions, with the US controlling the global chip supply and Japan and South Korea investing heavily in metaverses.

According to Deng, developing an immersive metaverse necessitates significant investment in hardware, software, and research talent. However, the metaverse experiences created by Tencent and Baidu are still not meeting users' expectations, while Apple's recent release of a virtual reality headset demonstrates that US companies are leading the way in global metaverse development. Despite this, China has an advantage in terms of user base and funding, making it the most likely to succeed in promoting metaverse adoption. Shanghai has unveiled 20 metaverse use cases it intends to develop by the end of 2025, all of which focus on offline, real-world scenarios.