Shanghai Finds How To Use Metaverse For Public Service In 5 Years

Shanghai wants to use the metaverse in people's lives. (photo: unsplash)

JAKARTA – Shanghai, China's busiest city, is now looking to use the metaverse in public services over the next five years.

The five-year development plan created by the Shanghai Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission for the electronic information industry lists four frontiers for exploration, one of which is the metaverse.

According to a CNBC report, the report calls for promoting the use of the metaverse in public services, business offices, social recreation, industrial manufacturing, production security, and electronic games. The Commission also plans to encourage further study and development of the underlying technologies, such as sensors, real-time interactions, and blockchain technology.

China's interest in new technologies has not wavered in recent years, and its efforts to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and use of digital biometric hardware wallets for virtual yuan have established it as a leader in CBDC issuance.

In March 2021, China's State Council released its five-year development plan covering many of the same fields for exploration. As reported by Cointelegraph, the term “blockchain” is used for the first time in China's 14th five-year plan, a document outlining the country's economic goals for the next five years, which runs from 2021 to 2025.

The Metaverse has become an area of interest for many large companies in recent months. In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta Platform Inc, to support the popularity of the term metaverse.

Despite the People's Bank of China warning about the metaverse and non-exchangeable tokens (NFT) in November, more than 1,000 Chinese businesses have filed tens of thousands of trademark applications referring to the term. More than 1,360 Chinese businesses have applied for 8,534 trademarks, according to the South China Morning Post.

The Chinese company is in the process of developing metaverse technology, with Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba among those aggressively working on related projects. Last week, Baidu debuted the XiRang metaverse app, which will be fully launched in six years.