Solomon Samuel 
During the 2023 Hangzhou Summit held in Hangzhou, China, government officials unveiled a new data exchange powered by blockchain technology.
Over three hundred businesses, including Alibaba Cloud and Huawei, participated in the inauguration of the exchange. The new Hangzhou Data Exchange will facilitate the trading of enterprise information technology data using distributed ledger technology, according to local news reports from August 23.
The platform, according to officials, would make exchange transactions immutable and traceable. Chen Chun, director of the National Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, stated that Hangzhou’s digital economy sector will surpass 500 billion Chinese yuan ($69 billion) in 2022, representing approximately 27% of the city’s gross domestic product.
China is a staunch supporter of government-controlled blockchain initiatives, despite harshly clamping down on private blockchain businesses for much of the year.
During the initial opening of the 2023 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that central bank digital currencies played an essential role in “expanding the share of local currency settlements among SCO countries.
“[The Hangzhou Data Exchange] Utilizes research blockchain, privacy computing and other technologies to realize trusted sharing and effective use of data across departments and regions under data security and privacy protection.”
Recently, more than 100 million yuan ($13.8 million) worth of digital-yuan CBDC was airdropped to Chinese residents to stimulate domestic expenditure.
However, not all initiatives have been successful. On December 28, 2022, it was rumored that the nation was in the final phases of launching its national nonfungible token exchange, CDEX. At the time of publication, development of the platform was still ongoing.