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https://scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3173147/chinese-broadcaster-shandong-television-pursues-nft-metaverse
Tech/ Tech Trends

Chinese broadcaster Shandong Television pursues NFT, metaverse projects as country’s media firms tap into virtual assets

  • Shandong Television plans to build its own blockchain infrastructure to support its digital collectibles, while developing ‘a series of metaverse products’
  • The provincial broadcaster’s foray into NFTs comes months after state-owned Xinhua announced the country’s first “news digital collectibles”
Chinese provincial broadcaster Shandong Television says its digital collectibles will revolve around the themes of cultural heritage, ancient architecture and natural scenery. Photo: Shutterstock

The television network of eastern China’s Shandong province has started developing a marketplace for digital collectibles, as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are called in the world’s second-largest economy, becoming the country’s latest government-owned media enterprise to jump on the virtual asset bandwagon after Xinhua News Agency last December.

Broadcaster Shandong Television also plans to build its own blockchain infrastructure to support its digital collectibles, while developing “a series of metaverse products”, the network said in a statement published on Monday. It provided no timeline for these projects.

The provincial TV network said its digital collectibles will revolve around the themes of cultural heritage, ancient architecture and natural scenery. It touted the province’s rich Confucian culture and tourist hotspots such as Mount Tai, the highest point in Shandong at 1,545 metres high, as valuable resources for its virtual asset collection.

NFTs generally refer to unique strings of blockchain-registered data that represent a digital file’s ownership. As such, NFTs are considered valuable because people can buy and trade these digital assets like physical items.

A view of the skyline of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province. Photo: Shutterstock
A view of the skyline of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province. Photo: Shutterstock

Shandong Television’s foray into NFTs comes months after state-owned Xinhua announced the country’s first “news digital collectibles”. A total of 110,001 copies of selected news photos were released for free by Xinhua via its mobile app on Christmas Eve.

Xinhua’s digital collectibles include the Chinese Communist Party’s celebration of its 100th anniversary in July at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the country’s recent milestone of administering more than 2.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses nationwide.

The latest initiative in Shandong reflects the continued interest for NFT- and metaverse-related projects across mainland China by both private and government enterprises, despite operating in a regulatory grey area and a previous warning by an official of the country’s central bank that these could “easily become money-laundering tools”.

The metaverse refers to an immersive virtual world, where digital representations of people can interact with each other like they do in real life. At the recent “two sessions”, the country’s largest annual gathering of lawmakers and top political consultants, a number of delegates published proposals on how China should embrace and regulate the metaverse.

SCMP Explains: What are NFTs?

05:15

SCMP Explains: What are NFTs?

In January, China’s state-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) conducted a soft launch of a nationwide infrastructure to support Chinese NFTs, marking a major step towards creating a domestic industry that is separated from the global market and not associated with any cryptocurrencies.

BSN said the infrastructure, known as BSN-Distributed Digital Certificates, would offer “a diverse, transparent, credible and reliable” one-stop shop for businesses to mint and manage their own NFTs without relying on cryptocurrencies, which are banned in China. Most NFTs around the world are part of the ethereum blockchain.

For Xinhua, internet giant Tencent Holdings provides support for the blockchain technology behind its news digital collectibles.

In one of the strongest signs that NFTs are here to stay in mainland China, an agency under the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last week announced plans to mint and sell a batch of digital collectibles this year to “spread China’s industrial culture”. It is also keen to build an “industrial metaverse service platform”.

On major NFT platforms in China, digital collectibles are sold in yuan and owners cannot resell them for profit.

Still, marketplaces run by Big Tech companies Tencent and Ant Group, the financial technology affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, recently took pre-emptive measures to avoid potential scrutiny of digital collectibles by mainland authorities. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Ant Group’s NFT platform Jingtan said that it would “alert the police and hand over [details] to judicial authorities” if users are found to be organising transactions outside the platform in ways that constitute criminal activity. Meanwhile, Tencent super app WeChat has banned several mini-programs offering digital collectibles.