China forms a metaverse working group with members from government, academia, and tech companies like Huawei and Baidu to push for standardization in the sector
Timmy Shen / The Block :
Context & Ripple Effects
China’s metaverse policy has been framed as an economic and industrial initiative rather than a primarily consumer-facing one, according to earlier assessments of its government-led metaverse push. The new group formalizes a channel for government, academic and corporate participants to coordinate technical direction.
It follows Beijing’s work on regulating the digital-human industry and China’s proposals for a metaverse digital-identity system at the ITU. Together, those efforts place standards alongside governance as a central part of the sector’s development.
First-order effects
- Huawei, Baidu and the other participating companies gain a direct forum to help shape the standards that may govern metaverse products and services in China.
- The working group gives public-sector, academic and industry participants a formal mechanism to align on standardization priorities.
Second-order effects
- Metaverse developers and platform providers may have to design around specifications emerging from the group, making participation and compliance more consequential for access to China’s market.
- Standards work can connect technical interoperability with policy requirements, particularly where identity, digital-human and platform governance initiatives overlap.
Third-order effects
- If the model persists, China’s metaverse market could develop through state-coordinated standards setting rather than solely through competition among consumer platforms.
- The effort may also strengthen China’s ability to promote its preferred technical and governance approaches internationally, though adoption outside the country remains uncertain.
The trend: This is one instance of China using state-led standardization to steer emerging digital industries toward domestic industrial and governance objectives.