That ban helped pave the way for the development of the Chinese metaverse, experts say, as it decoupled virtual spaces from digital assets. “The key difference [in the metaverse] between China and the rest of the world would be heavily regulated centrally,” says Zhengyuan Bo, a partner at China-focused research firm Plenum. “And there is only so much room for growth without [digital assets] for monetization.”
The government has not only cracked down on cryptocurrencies. Games, which have formed a mainstay of the metaverse in the West, have also come under pressure from above. Amid fears that young people were becoming addicted to online gaming, state media called the industry “spiritual opium.” Between 2018 and 2022, the government froze the issuance of new game licenses for 17 months. in total and, in 2021, minors limited to three hours of game time per week.
But the government is willing to back pieces of the metaverse that it thinks could be directly beneficial to the economy. digital twins were included in Beijing 14th Five-Year Planthe enormous economic strategy document that marks the national agenda from 2021 to 2025. A action plan Released late last year by five ministries, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it promised to grow the virtual reality industry to 350 billion yuan ($51 billion).
The high-level plan identified innovations they’d like to see more of, including near-eye display (a way of projecting images into a user’s eye); rendering processing (converting 2D or 3D models into realistic images), sensory interaction, and network transition.
But government support is conditional: Beijing has a vision of what metaverse technology will do for China. That means that instead of a virtual world where people can socialize, work and play, the metaverse must serve China’s physical economy.
“At the current stage, everyone is emphasizing the industrial applications of education, medicine, travel and industrial development,” says Siri Chen, HiAR’s marketing director, speaking from the company’s headquarters in the park. Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-tech. In a demo for WIRED, a HiAR employee played a factory worker with a HiAR headset and was remotely asked to fix a valve.
Other metaverse-related companies have pivoted in anticipation of government investment. For Eric Liu, co-founder and CTO of Shanghai-based digital twin company Digitwin Technologies, the 14th Five-Year Plan has helped underpin his company’s shift to focus on energy and manufacturing, “a field that I wasn’t prepared before” for this type of technology. , he says.
While the Chinese government’s desire to shape the metaverse may limit its reach, state support may mean it doesn’t fall victim to the notoriously fickle tech sector, which veers away from trends at high speed. Startups often try to be “in the middle of a whirlwind,” which means the right trend with explosive growth potential.
“If something gets jittery in China, you’ll see companies flood into the space,” says Jingshu Chen, co-founder of the VR company. Tack. “However, if growth is not as fast as your expectations, more companies are likely to switch.”
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