China is taking blockchain technology to its full extent. Just ask the citizens of the Chinese city of Loudi.
The Hunan-based city, a neighboring suburb of the city where party founder Mao Zedong was born, makes history by launching a blockchain platform for use in real estate data. People's Daily, the Party publication, reported that land, tax, and real estate departments are the backers of the project. They will also become the most frequent users of the platform, eventually.
The blockchain initiative was launched as a way to speed up things. This new system was inaugurated in the hopes that citizens won't have to queue up in long lines and to eliminate cumbersome processes like red tape and bureaucracy. It was launched last Nov. 15 in the city, which is located in the central part of the Hunan province.
With the new system in place, the Chinese city hopes that a lot of new procedures will eventually become normal, everyday processes. This includes real estate vouchers being issued electronically through the blockchain system, a sample of which was done on that very day itself.
China has made no secret about its intent to fully embrace blockchain technology as the next level both in the entertainment industry (gaming, cryptocurrency mining) to legitimate financial processes (government, real estate). In an effort to show their willingness to embrace the technology, institutions like the People's Bank of China (PBoC) instituted cross-border trading under the "Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao Dawan District Trade Finance Blockchain Platform."
Tech giant Alibaba has done its part by applying for a total of 406 patents, all of them for research into various branches of blockchain technology. Ping An Bank, for their part, has created a boutique bank with the intent of using blockchain as well as cloud services and the increasingly prevalent Internet of Things technology (IoT).
The state-owned Bank of Communications, meanwhile, has begun issuing digital mortgages under blockchain amounting to $1.3 billion worth in cash. The Agricultural Bank of China, as well, has created their part in the propagation of the technology by creating a loan using blockchain. The total loaned amounted to $300,000.
China hopes that its adoption of blockchain in real estate will create faster processing in the realm of real estate procedures, particularly in the issuance of mortgages in a digital manner. The country hopes it will usher in a new age of faster inter-operability between agencies as well as the reduction of paperwork.
