Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province, has launched an investment fund worth 10 billion yuan to promote Blockchain technology and a token-based economy, according to a report from local news source ZDNet.
Nanjing is one of China's most important cities. It is one of the country's four historical capitals (the others being Beijing, Luoyang, and Xi'an) and today it is the site of one of the world's biggest inland ports. Located in the east of the country, it has a population of just over 8 million people and more than 30 million in the metropolitan area.
Alibaba, one of the world's biggest technology corporations, chose Nanjing as the headquarters of its cryptocurrency mining business in October 2017.
The fund
The municipality's fund was created in conjunction with the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, which includes government agencies amongst its members. Yuandao, chairman of the ZBIA, announced the initiative at an event called the Industrial Public Chain Summit, which was also attended by Luo Qun, deputy secretary of the local Communist Party branch.
Yuandao said that more industries adopting blockchain technology means that more will follow suit.
The city of Nanjing will also provide incentives for blockchain businesses to physically relocate to the city.
According to the report, one of the first projects to benefit from the fund will be UÐAP, which describes itself as a 'blockchain middleware service'. This means that it helps users make decentralised applications to represent their real-world assets as tokens, according to its website.
Background
Despite its outlawing of many aspects of the cryptocurrency industry, blockchain technology is booming in China and has the support of the government. The South China Morning Post reported last week that more than 16,000 businesses using blockchain have popped up over the last year, and over 3,000 with the word blockchain actually in their names in the first half of 2018 alone.
Local governments throughout the country have been encouraging the industry with financial incentives - examples include Shanghai, Shanxi, Henan, Guangzhou, Guiyang, and Hangzhou. Reportedly, approximately 41 percent of all Chinese startups that successfully received funding in 2018 were somehow related to blockchain technology.
