China Wants to "Accelerate" Development of Blockchain Standards

China, the world-renowned lover of blockchain and hater of Bitcoin, has called on the National Blockchain and Distributed Accounting Technology Standardization Technical Committee to “accelerate” the development of standards for the blockchain industry. In a paper published on the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) website, author Zhou Ping of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), argues that the development of a standard blockchain architecture is vital if blockchain systems are to be properly guided and implemented across a wide variety of industries.
China is known to be a big fan of the potential of blockchain technology, and establishing standards, much like the internet in the 1980s/90s, is the next logical step forward in the scale of adoption it envisages.

Immature and Imbalanced

Ping is the director of the Software Engineering and Evaluation Center at China’s Electronics Technology Standardization Research Institute and secretary general of the China Blockchain Technology and Industry Development Forum. He says that work on the standards began in 2016, where five categories for blockchain standardization were stipulated – foundation, processes and method, information security, business and applications, and interoperability.
Some of these five categories have met with progress, but the report cites an “immature and imbalanced” view of the technology’s application across various sectors and scenarios, as well insufficient recruitment of blockchain talent, which it notes as being particularly important.

Standardization Holds the Key

With the rapid development of blockchain projects and protocols, standardization is a fundamental aspect of any platform on which China wishes to build quality projects. It’s also critical for protecting individuals, businesses, and projects exposed to blockchain infrastructure. Considering that China already has the Hangzhou Blockchain Industrial Park, the Xiamen ZhongChuan IoT Industry Research Institute, and the Blockchain Research Office within the Electronic Industry Standards Research Institute, it is clearly not in the mood for hanging about for blockchain to organize itself.
With the blockchain standard expected to published by the end of 2019, the National Blockchain and Distributed Accounting Technology Standardization Technical Committee, established in May this year, clearly has a big year ahead.