China Successfully Tests Blockchain-based Cross Border Trades, Plans Digital Yuan Release By 2022 Winter Olympics

While the world has been grappling to deal with the current economic crisis, China is accelerating its development to position itself as a leader for the upcoming blockchain revolution.

The Chinese city of Qingdao has successfully tested a cross-border platform pilot. The businesses operating out of Qingdao has successfully implemented their first cross-border trades along with its partners in North America and Southeast Asia.

Local Chinese publication Sina said that the participating companies are happy by using the pilot platform and the local banks will work further to improve the services. Nearly 37 local business from Qingdao conducted their business on the blockchain platform with businesses located in the U.S., Mexico, India, and other countries.

As per the Sina publication, the blockchain platform has successfully managed to verify and authenticate finance and export loans, corporate credit information, and electronic tax filing forms. The platform is able to handle transactions worth millions of dollars in under 10 minutes.

This has significantly reduced the time of trade settlements which earlier used to take around 12 hours. Financial personnel of Borec Brake System Co., Ltd., a Qingdao-based vehicle brake manufacturer company involved in the pilot program, commented:

“We really didn’t expect that trade finance lending is so fast, and the operation is so convenient. Thanks to the cross-border financial blockchain service platform, our company’s urgent needs have been solved.”

In another news, China has finally given the timeline for the release of its Digital Yuan. In the recent weeks, several reports have suggested that China has been testing its CBDC project in the local market by working with local tech businesses.

A high-ranking official at the Chinese central bank - People’s Bank of China (PBoC) - made a recent revelation on the CCTV television network saying that China plans to launch its digital currency/electronic payment (DC/EP) will be in use during the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled in China’s Beijing and Hubei provinces in February 2022. The source has also confirmed that local banks from four cities in China have already tested the DCEP. These include cities like Xiong’an New Area, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Suzhou.