The state-run Xinhua News Agency, China's largest news organization, announced Wednesday that it will release a non-fungible token-based digital media photo collection.
The debut of the NFT is a first for China and a boost for the blockchain technology that powers them and has been criticized by the government in the past.
Over the last few years, the Chinese government has cracked down on cryptocurrency-related activity. However, the clampdown was stepped further this year when the government prohibited a slew of cryptocurrency-related operations.
According to Xinhua, a collection of NFTs will be released later this week. The NFT collection is scheduled to launch on Christmas Eve and will be mainland China's first news digital collectibles backed by NFTs.
Local reports have indicated that Xinhua would distribute free copies of 110,001 selected news photographs. Eleven collections will be released, each with 10,000 copies and a special edition copy. At 8 p.m. local time on Christmas Eve, the NFTs will be available via Xinhua's mobile app.
Wolfie Zhao of The Block Research disclosed the 11 photographs in the NFT collection commemorate significant occasions for China in 2021, including the country's first gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the Chinese Communist Party's 100th anniversary.
Tencent's government-approved enterprise blockchain network, Zxinchain, will issue Xinhua's NFT collection. The company issued nonfungible tokens on the same chain last September, with a collection of digital cave paintings from China's Gansu province's Mogao Caves, a UNESCO world heritage site.
This year, NFTs, or digital ownership certificates, have become increasingly popular throughout the world, appearing in everything from signature tweets to paintings.
Although the state news agency's announcement would appear to show official backing for NFTs, the party mouthpiece People's Daily recently blasted them as a probable hoax.
The metaverse, a shared world built on virtual reality technologies, has previously been described as "a great and illusionary concept" by the Securities Times, which is also an official media outlet.
Another milestone that would be included in the NFTs is China's recent achievement of administering over 2.7 billion COVID-19 vaccination doses across the country.
This latest development occurs at a time when Chinese companies are making inroads into the NFT market. JD.com became the latest Chinese tech company to roll out a digital collectible platform on Tuesday, following Alibaba and Tencent.
NFT technologies are already being explored or used by Chinese enterprises, including the unlisted Ant Group. Following the Xinhua news, most Chinese metaverse-related stocks surged on Wednesday.
