Tech giants could be rattled by a Chinese government’s metaverse stance?

Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial hub, has shown strong interest in the metaverse. According to its five-year development plan, the city is looking to encourage the “application of the metaverse in areas such as public services, business offices, social entertainment, industrial manufacturing, production safety, and electronic games.”

Although the said document, as translated by CNBC, did not give a specific timeline for the city’s metaverse project, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology noted that the metaverse is one of four frontiers for exploration. Additionally, the Commission is keen to expand research into the underlying metaverse technologies such as sensors, real-time interactions, and blockchain.

The metaverse is a fad, or not? It has rapidly grown to be a buzzword since the American social media company Facebook (NASDAQ:), changed its name in October to Meta Platforms Inc. Many notable tech figures have also supported this latest trend. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder (NASDAQ:), predicted last month that the majority of office meetings will move to the metaverse in the coming two to three year. On the flip side, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk claimed that at its current state, the metaverse is more of a marketing buzzword and not all it has been touted to be.

While it is still unclear if this metaverse frenzy will be more than a buzzword in the future, tech companies are jumping on board. In the Chinese scenes, Beijing-based Baidu (NASDAQ:) recently held what it claimed to be China’s first metaverse conference, amid the government’s anti-crypto stance. The event marked the opening of Baidu’s metaverse app to developers.

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