Foreign media: Beijing regulators require clear blockchain development standards

Rage Commentary : According to Sina Finance, Huo Xuewen, Party Secretary and Director of Beijing Financial Work Bureau, said at a financial technology event held last week that clear rules are needed for blockchain technology development. Huo Xuewen pointed out that blockchain technology can indeed bring us convenience and efficiency, but due to the lack of clear rules, it also brings many problems and even becomes the source of illegal financial activities.

Translation: Clover

A Beijing municipal government official has called on the country to clarify a “standard” path for developing blockchain technology.

Huo Xuewen, party secretary of the Beijing Municipal Financial Work Bureau (Beijing Economic Strategy Research Group), raised the need for the “healthy” development of the blockchain industry at a fintech event last week, according to a speech published by Sina Finance.

In his speech, Huo Xuewen briefly outlined the wide range of use cases for blockchain technology, including payments, credit and transactions, and called for clear blockchain rules to make the development of the technology easier, which he said would solve problems in the technology and hinder any potential illegal financial activities.

Huo Xuewen

Although Huo’s remarks focused more on the technology itself, he also pointed out risk areas including P2P lending in digital currencies and pyramid schemes.

The move comes just months after China’s central bank said it would become more directly involved in regulating domestic bitcoin exchanges. This has led to a policy shift by China’s “big three” bitcoin exchanges, which have adopted measures to freeze withdrawals as part of regulators’ mandate to update their anti-money laundering procedures.

While Huo did not mention the PBOC’s work on bitcoin regulation, he did highlight its work on digital currency systems using distributed ledger technology, with initial trials conducted last year involving Chinese financial institutions including WeBank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.