Chinese authorities in Chengdu are looking to adopt blockchain. technology. The goal is to put the practice to use throughout the city, including cross-border trade, urban governance, agriculture and smart manufacturing. Right now, the plan is for a 30 blockchain application over a two year period.

The city of Chengdu hosted its first International Blockchain Industry Expo during the 2020 Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fair. At the event, Lu Tiecheng, the Party Group of The Chengdu New Economy Committee secretary, released the “Chengdu Blockchain Application Scenario Supply Action Plan.”

The plan allows submissions for blockchain adoption from contributors in a wide range of fields. This includes intellectual property, education, financial services and healthcare. The government expects there will be a number of blockchain cluster areas of development ingrained in the program over the coming two years.

The plan also advocated blockchain usefulness in relation to legal compliance. It states that officials anticipate a strengthened data collection as well as promotion of a “unified management, risk prevention, and control” in urban operations.

The secretary of the Party Group of the Chengdu New Economy Committee said blockchain could be applied as well to the medical field. Secretary Tiecheng hinted that distributed technology might be applied for electronic medical records, material verification, electronic prescription circulation, vaccine traceability and medical data sharing applications.

China’s former Science and Technology vice minister, Wu Zhongze said during an interview that in terms of developing blockchain-based ecosystems, there was “not much difference between where China and leading economies such as the United States and Europe.”

Blockchain technology entails a system that records information that greatly minimizes the possibility of abusing the system. It creates a digital transaction ledger duplicated and distributed across a computer network, a blockchain. Every time a new transaction occurs, the transaction is added to the ledger. The database is managed by a DLT, a distributed ledger technology, consisting of multiple participants.