The Chinese government has announced that it plans to start using blockchain technology for collecting taxes and issuing electronic invoices. It’s currently unclear exactly how that will work, but it could dovetail nicely with other digitization plans in the country. We’ve previously reported that China’s central bank is testing its own digital currency, and while that won’t necessarily be based on blockchain, it could still be neatly combined with a new approach for issuing invoices and collecting payments.

China is leading the pack when it comes to nation-states embracing the distributed ledger technology, having added blockchain as a priority in its Thirteenth Five-Year National Informatization Plan in 2016. The notion of using blockchain for applications such as tax returns and health records has drifted through Congress in the past, but the U.S. is still some time from using the technology in earnest.

For a whistlestop tour of some of the other applications that blockchain might be used for in the future, check out our two-minute explainer video.