China‘s central internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration, released the first list of companies approved to conduct business with blockchain technology.
The list includes 197 businesses, in which according to analysts, are given the permission to "provide a controllable environment to explore blockchain technology."
And here, China's "BAT" is in the list.
They are Baidu with Baidu Blockchain Engine (BBE), Alibaba with Cloud Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), and Tencent with Tencent BaaS (TBaaS).
Companies that are in the list, are required to display their registration number in a "prominent position" on the service they provide, according to the official announcement published March on 30.
The move follows the wave of unregulated initial coin offerings (ICO) that happened for years.
For a Chinese company to be featured and included on the list, it needs to be first reviewed by the Chinese State Internet Information Office, and see whether it meets the criteria laid out in the “Regulations on the Management of Blockchain Information Services” implemented on February 15, 2019.
Financial institutions such as China Zheshang Bank and Ping An Insurance are also on the list of regulated firms. The full list of registered companies can be viewed as a PDF file on the Cyberspace Administration’s website here (all information in Chinese).
The news comes as China wants to propel itself ahead as the world leader in blockchain technology.
In November 2018, China was the leader in the world with 263 active blockchain products. Here, the country accounts to about 25 percent of all blockchain projects in the world, according to figures from Beijing-based data service provider Blockdata.
At that time, there were 615 blockchain companies in China, with half of them developing blockchain technologies for the financial industry.
The country has also seen an exponential rise in the number of blockchain companies, with at least 100 startups emerging just in 2017.
These companies in total, have a number patents on the technology, beating the U.S. by 28 patents.
China may not be the friendliest place for cryptocurrencies, as the country bans ICO. But despite that, China is propelling itself ahead by embracing the blockchain, the decentralized technology was originally meant for Bitcoin.
In 2018, China's president Xi Jinping endorsed blockchain, when he openly praised the technology, as the technology continues to cement itself in the country’s future plans.