Shanghai will spend a record amount to support the development of virtual reality

Shanghai authorities are planning to spend $ 1.5 billion on the development of a metaverse, hoping to help China’s economic recovery after the pandemic. This is currently the largest investment in virtual reality among all countries and companies.

According to representatives of the China’s financial and commercial hub, the organization will create a fund dedicated to the development of virtual reality in Shanghai. It is planned to facilitate the creation of 10 large corporations and 100 enterprises that will develop 100 new products and services in metaverse by 2025.

«We expect that the development of metaverse will continuously stimulate the creation of new business models in the real and virtual worlds,» explained Wu Jincheng, chairman of the Shanghai Information Technology Committee. They promised to pay special attention to the launch of their own metaverse and a platform for trading digital assets. They also hope to bring to life a new type of tourism that will offer Shanghai guests both real and virtual interaction with the city.

Interestingly, along with the support of virtual technologies in Chinese schools, students were given the opportunity to pay for meals with digital yuan — a special device was installed in one of the schools to allow such transactions; Chinese banks allow them to receive a percentage of their assets in the central bank’s digital currency. China has a strict policy of controlling digital assets: Liu Tianjian, director of the National Press of China, said that non-fungible tokens in China will be censored before mining to «comply with the country’s core values.»