China launches a pilot in 15 cities and 164 organizations to test the use of blockchain in manufacturing, government data sharing, law enforcement, and more
Some of the key areas of blockchain development include manufacturing, energy, government data sharing and services, law enforcement …
Context & Ripple Effects
This pilot is the latest step in a state-led blockchain build-out that began years ago: the central bank assembled a research team and tested prototypes for its own blockchain-based currency back in 2017 (central bank prototype work), then launched the Blockchain Service Network in 2020 as a domestic platform for application development (Blockchain Service Network launch).
The same period saw the digital yuan move from central-bank development into expanding city pilots (digital yuan city expansion) with JD.com testing it commercially (JD.com digital yuan pilot). What changed here is scope: instead of one application domain, 15 cities and 164 organizations are testing blockchain across manufacturing, energy, government data sharing, law enforcement, and taxation simultaneously — a breadth that foreshadows where the program landed by late 2023, when China planned to roll out RealDID to verify the IDs of its 1.4B people on the Blockchain-based Service Network (RealDID rollout plan).
First-order effects
- The 164 participating organizations across manufacturing, energy, government data sharing, law enforcement, and taxation must now integrate blockchain into real workflows, giving the Blockchain Service Network ecosystem its first large-scale, multi-sector deployment base.
- Municipal governments in the 15 pilot cities become the test bed where blockchain-based data sharing sits alongside the digital yuan pilots already running in major cities.
Second-order effects
- Vendors and platforms building on the Blockchain Service Network gain a state-sanctioned channel into government and industrial customers, while sectors left out of the pilot face pressure to demonstrate comparable digitization to win inclusion in later rounds.
- Convergence pressure builds between the payment rail (digital yuan) and the identity/data rails being piloted here — the same city networks end up hosting both, which is the combination RealDID later formalizes.
Third-order effects
- If the pilot-to-scale pattern holds — prototypes, platform, city pilots, national rollout — blockchain in China consolidates into state-operated verification infrastructure rather than open networks, with identity verification at population scale as the endpoint.
- The staged-pilot model itself becomes the template for how the state gates emerging-technology deployment, extending an approach visible across China's digital-currency and AI governance programs.
The trend: China is institutionalizing blockchain through staged municipal and organizational pilots that graduate into national, state-run infrastructure, from the Blockchain Service Network toward population-scale identity verification.