The Chinese government and its federal authorities are getting increasingly involved in the blockchain space to push forward innovation throughout the country.

In the latest, the government released an official notice stating that they have put together a technical committee of 15 organizations to devise national standards for blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

This comes only three days after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) called for feedback on the data security standards of blockchain and other technologies.

An all-inclusive committee

To ensure that the national standards thus set by the committee are in compliance with the existing laws and also promote the development of the industry, the government has included people from 15 organizations from political, financial, industrial, academic and research backgrounds.

This includes the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Digital Currency Research Institue, MIIT, Tencent, Zhe­jiang Uni­ver­sity and Baidu.

The committee currently lists 71 people from those organizations, who will be chaired by MIIT vice-min­is­ter Chen Zhaox­iong. The PBOC Digital Currency Research Institute’s vice head Di Gang will act as one of the five vice chairs to the committee.

China is progressing in blockchain and digital currency

China has been leading the blockchain and cryptocurrency space in terms of innovation. While the United States leads the way in terms of total investments in blockchain, China has so far shown better progress in terms of technical implementation and regulatory reforms to support research and development in this sector.

Earlier in March, China completed the development of the basic functions of its central bank digital currency and the government was on to drafting laws to start circulating the digital yuan.