Metaverse in China: a brave new world

The „metaverse“ is also the tech buzzword of the hour in China. With gaming giants like Tencent and high 5G coverage, the People’s Republic is ideally equipped for the creation of a virtual parallel world. However, the government remains skeptical and is focusing on decoupling in the metaverse as well.

Although Facebook is still banned in China, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was rebranding his company „Meta“ and would henceforth devote himself to the development of a so-called metaverse also made waves in the People’s Republic. Only one day after the name change, the Chinese search engine provider Baidu secured the brand name „metaapp“ on October 29. Chinese gaming giant NetEase and e-commerce giant Alibaba also pushed forward to get in early on „metaverse“ business models, at least in name – for example, with an unspecified „Ali Metaverse.“ According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the metaverse industry could be worth $800 billion by 2024. And according to forecasts by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), it could even be worth $1.54 trillion by 2030.

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