In the bid to stimulate the real economy through blockchain applications, the Investor and Venture Capital arm of People’s Daily Online—People Capital, has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with the Shenzhen-based Xunlei Limited, according to an official press release.

The global partnership agreement between People Capital and Xunlei was signed on July 22, 2018. It and was first disclosed at the China-US Entrepreneur and Investment Summit hosted by the People’s Daily Online in Silicon Valley, California.

Contained in the agreement signed by both parties is the plan to establish a laboratory for “technology innovation” and serving as a component of the People’s Capital Blockchain Research Institute. The collaboration of both entities will be geared towards exploring the application of blockchain technology to integrate its innovative system across different businesses.

Operating Mechanism

General Manager of the People’s Daily Ye Zhenzhen pointed to the “operating mechanism” as the most important part of the blockchain mechanism. He went further stating that “Through the ingenious combination of technologies, the fair distribution of resources is completed.”

Poised to ensure blockchain is streamlined along with the services rendered by the People’s Daily Online which is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CCP), the collaboration will also build a “high-level industrial service platform” to provide offline activities such as workshops, seminars, and application competitions.

Mr. Zhao Yahui, General Manager of People Capital and Mr. Lei Chen, Xunlei and Onething Technologies CEO, jointly announced the establishment of the blockchain foundational technology innovation laboratory. Image Source.

Established in 1997, the People’s Daily Online is the online version of the People’s Daily, and it floats a multilingual internet presence with pages in Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and English. These pages provide news mainly about happenings in China but offer a less in-depth discourse on socio-political and economic analysis of China’s foreign policies and political trajectories.

People’s Daily has often been regarded by many as the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party. The company enjoys the largesse of the government through tax allowances thereby giving it the leverage for expansion. The company was exempted from remitting taxes from 2010 to 2013 as part of concessions to ensure state-controlled cultural firms become real companies.

The online version in 2012 became modern China’s first listed media company on the country’s A-Share Market running an editorial business.

Xunlei, a multinational technology company, and an online service provider, is one of the global leaders in the provision of blockchain infrastructures and services for companies in China and beyond. Founded in 2003, the company ranked as the most commonly used BitTorrent client in the world in 2010. Its peer-to-peer software and download manager supports HTTP, FTP, eDonkey and BitTorrent protocols.

BLockchain Use Cases in Media

Last month, China’s oldest media publication covering news in the tech industry, Beijing Sci-Tech made known its plans to offer subscriptions payable with Bitcoin (BTC). The development was received with mixed reactions due to the government’s recent clampdown on crypto exchanges and Initial Coin Offerings which halted blockchain operations among many operators.

Back in July, an audacious project worth $5 million was sponsored by blockchain platform ConsenSys to provide blockchain startup Civil Media Company with a platform where independent newsrooms can keep correspondence with their readers. These readers will have the privilege of possessing stakes in the form of cryptocurrency to support any publication they trust on the blockchain. The effort which is an innovation aimed at integrating journalism into the blockchain will give readers the right to vote for stories they deem ethical with their civil tokens.

Civil launched its token (CVL) on September 28 in a fundraising event. The company promised not to relent on its oars until it creates a decentralized network for ethical journalism. 681 of its newsreaders have purchased their CVL token, and this amounted to $1,344,721.59.

In February, Jason Goldberg of Simple Token (OST) partnered with photography platform Unsplash to tokenize billions of photo events and bringing blockchain to the mainstream of photo-journalism.