China’s official Xinhua News Agency is reportedly planning to complete the issuance of its first series of nonfungible token (NFT) collectibles, as revealed on December 22nd. 

Specifically, the initiative is reportedly an effort showing support for blockchain – which was persistently ignored by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the past. 

As disclosed in an official note, Xinhua reportedly has a target of finalizing the issuance of 10,000 copies of 11 photos taken by journalists this year.

The decision to establish its footprints across NFTs is reportedly perplexing, due to the recent events in one of the top two most major economies in the world, where a crackdown was applied throughout the nation that led to the prohibition of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) mining, along with an agenda against NFTs and metaverses, with proposals for tighter supervision on both sectors. 

Regardless, tech heavyweights in the country such as Tencent and Huawei still rushed to complete the acquisition of trademarks in the metaverse.

This development will not be China’s first venture into NFTs. During the “DeFi Summer 2.0,” The South China Morning Post reportedly came up with a series of NFTs, utilizing a new token dubbed “ARTIFACT”, built with the purpose of preserving historical assets on the blockchain.

Nonetheless, it is an important note to acknowledge that the SCMP is headquartered in Hong Kong, which consequently means that the paper benefits from higher levels of autonomy as well as the executive, legislative and independent judicial power for which Hong Kong is known.

Hong Kong is reportedly a known player in the field of blockchain and NFT minting. In June 2021, pro-Hong Kong activists was reportedly successful in archiving articles from the Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper onto the blockchain, with over 4,000 Apple Daily articles being uploaded to ARWeave.