People's Daily Overseas Edition: China promotes independent innovation in blockchain technology

People's Daily Overseas Edition (November 25, 2019, page 10)

Original title: "China promotes independent innovation in blockchain technology (expert interpretation)"

Comic "The Future Has Come". By Xu Jun (Photo from Xinhua News Agency)

Wired magazine in the United States pointed out in a recent report that China is advancing towards global dominance in the blockchain field. Since last year, more than 500 blockchain projects from many powerful Chinese companies have been registered with the Cyberspace Administration of China. The People's Bank of China is stepping up its efforts to launch a digital currency electronic payment system (DCEP), which can replace cash with blockchain solutions, which will make China the first major economy to adopt its own digital currency.

According to Reuters, the Chinese government is creating its own central bank-issued digital currency to reduce the circulation cost of paper money and strengthen policymakers' control over the money supply.

The U.S. Consumer News and Business Channel website recently reported that China was once seen as an imitator in the field of technology, but now it is seeking to become a global leader in fields ranging from blockchain to artificial intelligence.

On October 24, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held its 18th collective study on the current status and trends of blockchain technology development. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, emphasized in presiding over the study that the integrated application of blockchain technology plays an important role in new technological innovation and industrial transformation. We must take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, clarify the main direction, increase investment, focus on conquering a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the innovation and development of blockchain technology and industry.

According to the definition in the "Blockchain White Paper (2019)" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, blockchain is a bookkeeping technology that is jointly maintained by multiple parties, uses cryptography to ensure transmission and access security, can achieve consistent data storage, is difficult to tamper with, and prevents repudiation. It is also called distributed ledger technology.

From the perspective of goals, blockchain aims to solve the "trust" problem. According to the original model, the interaction between people or between two entities is based on "trust" on a third-party individual or organization. For example, in online transfer operations, various payment platforms are third-party entities trusted by both parties to the transaction. It is not difficult to imagine that when the third party is heavily relied on, the transaction process will face various risks. The application of blockchain technology can build a trustworthy platform, transfer the trust of the original interacting parties in the third party to the trust in the platform, and provide technical guarantee for the "trust" of the interaction.

From a methodological perspective, blockchain technology uses a distributed ledger to enable each authorized node to save and maintain the same consensus transaction information, thereby effectively avoiding the single point of failure, security risks and privacy leakage problems that exist in the centralized accounting model of third-party entities. Based on blockchain technology, this trusted platform is jointly built by the power of all nodes. Compared with the past, this new method reconstructs the trust relationship between unfamiliar interactive entities.

The white paper points out that blockchain has created a new computing paradigm and collaboration model for building trust at low cost in an untrustworthy competitive environment. With its unique trust-building mechanism, it has achieved penetrating supervision and step-by-step trust transmission.

At present, blockchain technology has not become a "must have" option in the Internet field, but in time, its importance will gradually become prominent. Looking around the world, major countries are accelerating the layout of blockchain technology development. The application of blockchain technology has now expanded to many fields such as digital finance, Internet of Things, intelligent manufacturing, supply chain management, and digital asset trading. The development of blockchain technology is of far-reaching significance. On the one hand, the application of blockchain technology is conducive to reducing the cost caused by "distrust" in the process of mutual cooperation between entities; on the other hand, blockchain technology is highly expected in the era of "value Internet" and may become the basic platform of the next generation of Internet.

In the field of blockchain, China not only has a good development foundation, but also has increasingly active academic research and has achieved certain results in application. In terms of the number of applied and approved patents, China is in a leading position in the world. In terms of output value, related companies have achieved a series of results in technology research and development and industrial application. In terms of technical characteristics, blockchain can be integrated with multiple fields to produce better economic benefits. At present, the application of blockchain in finance is the most in-depth, and there are also many attempts and demonstration applications in the fields of supply chain, social public services, education, medical care, industry, etc. The pace of implementation of blockchain technology is accelerating.

Blockchain technology has broad development prospects and a wide range of application scenarios, but it still faces many challenges.

First, the integration issue still needs to be explored. The keyword of blockchain is "platform". To play the role of blockchain, we need to give full play to its platform function. How to combine blockchain technology with other emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence to maximize its effectiveness is still an issue that needs to be explored.

Second, tackling core technologies is the key. my country is more focused on applications in the development of blockchain. Compared with Western countries, there is still a certain gap in core technologies. The lack of key technologies will directly lead to new "neck-stuck" links. Since the development of global blockchain technology is still in its early stages, if we can seize the opportunity, further increase investment, provide more policy support, attach importance to basic research and multi-faceted attempts, tackle core technologies, and take the initiative, it will greatly enhance my country's international voice and rule-making power in this field.

Third, regulatory capabilities need to be further strengthened. The healthy development of blockchain needs to rely on the improvement of regulatory capabilities, especially in light of national conditions, to strengthen protection in areas such as data and privacy.

Fourth, we urgently need high-end talents to continue to help. Blockchain is a fusion technology of cryptography, computer science, economics and other disciplines. At the same time, the development of blockchain needs to be integrated with cutting-edge technologies. This requires a large number of high-end compound talents. Only by strengthening the construction of the talent team, establishing a complete blockchain talent training system, and increasing the introduction and training of international high-end blockchain talents can we continue to help the development of my country's blockchain field. (Interviewed experts: Zhu Liehuang, Secretary-General of the Blockchain Committee of the China Computer Society, and Wang Ying interviewed and sorted)

Editors: Zhang Jingyan, Bao Ruiyi

Editor-in-charge: Tang Jing