China’s tech giants and big state-owned banks have figured prominently on the latest Forbes list of the world’s top 50 blockchain players in 2022.
The Forbes Blockchain 50 2022 list hosts a total of seven Chinese entrants, including the big state-owned banks China Construction Bank (CCB) and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).
CCB has processed USD$141 billion in transactions on private blockchains for a range of purposes, including supply-chain financing and cross-border payments. CCB’s use of blockchain technology has helped to slash settlement times from several days to just ten minutes, via simultaneous processing on the shared ledgers of CCB branches.
ICBC has developed 40 blockchain applications which handled over $48 million in transactions for local governments and industries in 2021. Icago is one of its leading apps, helping to issue rewards to customers for use of energy-efficient vehicles by connecting ICBC customer wallets to government transportation data via the blockchain.
Chinese tech and fintech companies also figure prominently on the 2022 list, including Ant Group, Baidu, OneConnect, Tencent and WeBank.
Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group has 10,000 blockchain developers, who have created 30 applications and produced over 100 million blockchain-tracked documents via the AntChain platform.
Baidu has 20,000 developers that are focused primarily on financial applications for its open source XuperChain platform. The company entered a USD$25 million deal with the city of Tongxiang, just south of Shanghai, in September to use the blockchain for supply chain tracking purposes.
Ping An Group’s fintech subsidiary OneConnect has used its blockchain financing platform to make over $12 billion in loans to a million small businesses in Guangdong province over the past two years, while tech giant Tencent is using its Tencent Cloud Blockchain platform to facilitate the issuance of bills and invoices for sectors including healthcare and transit.
Tencent is also involved in fintech blockchain applications via digital lender WeBank, in which it holds a 30% stake. WeBank uses the blockchain to record “Green Bud Points” issued via a WeChat mini-app, that can then be exchanged for rewards.
