Without a doubt, there are a host of emerging technologies today. Indeed, ICT has offered wider options for innovation. Among all these, the metaverse seems to have caught the attention of Chinese industries the most, finding it most useful – so confirmed China’s business leaders.
Already, the emerging metaverse technologies are expected to be integrated into a wide range of sectors including industry, agriculture, manufacturing, retail and consumption. Moreover, the emerging ICT will fundamentally change the way people work and interact in their daily lives, experts and business executives affirmed recently.
Leading experts in technology foresee a brighter future ahead with metaverse leading the way. For instance, a global managing director at a major global consultancy firm confirmed in a recent metaverse forum in China that the metaverse will help to strongly accelerate industrial modernisation and industrial digitalisation.
The metaverse is a big improvement over traditional virtual reality. Specifically, its new concept refers to a shared virtual world in which people can interact via various forms of virtual technology, such as virtual reality and augmented reality. It’s no surprise some experts refer to it as “virtual reality on steroids”.
Chinese industry stalwarts are wont to agree. A senior vice-president of a Chinese Artificial Intelligence (AI) pioneer firm said the combined physical and virtual reality internet will fundamentally change how people work and interact. For example, the virtual worlds of the metaverse will offer an alternative for farmers to monitor the health of their crops and formulate crop management plans. The industrial metaverse will also offer an excellent alternative for manufacturers to test their products, the business leader added.
Still, the metaverse poses a huge challenge for China. While the country has its unique advantage in the development of the metaverse including a solid foundation of Big Data, abundant human resources, developed industrial chains of hardware manufacturing and rich culture, the country needs to ramp up efforts to close the technological gap with developed countries in fields such as chips, operating systems and optical displays.
There are key technologies that China has to look into to make the most of the metaverse. Recently, Beijing has been keen on putting on the controls over AI making sure industries that utilise the emerging tech do so responsibly.
A chairman of one of China’s leading AI technology companies based in Shanghai had only bright prospects for the metaverse. He noted that 2022 marks the year of the metaverse, saying the metaverse will enter a stage of rapid development in the next one to three years. Looking ahead, the industry leader said the metaverse technologies will be integrated into various sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.
It’s been a robust decade for the country so far. China’s aggressive approach to its digital transformation has been largely fruitful and its people are enjoying 5G technology more. Though the whole country is still not fully covered, the benefits of 5G are trickling to the masses as another 5G state-owned operator, the fourth on the line has been licensed to start cellphone registrations.
In addition, to ensure smooth application of the technology, China has installed a metaverse committee set to promulgate guidelines for everyone’s benefit. All the development is bound to grow China’s relations with the world.
