Wuhan, a significant town in central China where Covid-19 initially appeared, has declared ambitions to embrace the metaverse in order to revive its pandemic-devastated economy.
According to its 2022 work plan, the administration of Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, plans to integrate the metaverse, blockchain, big data, cloud computing, geospatial information, and quantum technologies into its economy.
According to the China Securities Journal, three main locations — Zhejiang province, Hefei city in Anhui province, and Wuxi city in Jiangsu province — have also stated their metaverse objectives in work plans or other statements.
Chinese official media has already published concerns about the metaverse, including an editorial piece in the Economic Daily that compared small and mid-sized metaverse investments to “licking the blood off at the tip of a knife,” alluding to immature technology.
According to statistics from business tracker Qichacha, Chinese enterprises, including tech behemoths Baidu and NetEase, have raced into the metaverse market, filing more than 3,700 associated trademarks as of Monday.
