China reportedly accounts for approximately 84% of all blockchain applications submitted worldwide. This is according to the latest data shared by the country’s government official.
Avoid cryptos but support blockchain
Where the country avoids cryptocurencies, they do support the underlying blockchain technology. They have therefore promoted its use considerably in recent years. The high percentage of blockchain-related patents does not seem to come as a complete surprise.
The country’s president Xi Jinping has been instrumental in promoting the relatively new technology. In 2019, for example, he called on the citizens and companies of the country to actively participate and innovate in this technology. According to him, it would play a key role in the future of the next industrial revolution.
Low approval rate
Since then, several Chinese companies have entered the blockchain world. The country has already filed 4,435 blockchain-related patents. A previous study found that from 2015 to June 2021, China filed about 60% of global blockchain patents. This percentage has increased significantly in recent years.
It is worth noting that although China submits so many blockchain applications in percentage terms, so few are approved. The approval rate is currently only 19%. Another important thing to note is that China is not very big on decentralization, the very same principle that blockchain technology is based on.
This was evident in the country’s digital yuan development, among other things, where the central bank developed the digital national currency on the composite version of a blockchain with full control over its operation instead of using the traditional distributed network approach.