Huawei today announced a partnership with the People’s Bank of China’s Digital Currency Research Institute, according to a post on its WeChat account. Without disclosing further details, Huawei said that the two are cooperating for financial technology research.
The news follows recent developments with the Chinese government’s plans to digitize the Chinese Reminbi and at last launch its long-planned state-backed digital currency. In fact, just last month, the Digital Currency Research Institute, which heads up the project, published a recruitment notice seeking tech experts to join its ranks.
Though Huawei highlighted its “distributed database” in today’s announcement, any further conclusions drawn about the nature of the agreement would be speculative. What is known, however, is that both Huawei and the Digital Currency Research Institute are both heavy into blockchain research.
Apart from plans to digitize the Chinese Reminbi, the Chinese city of Guangzhou recently announced a $150 million blockchain subsidy for “outstanding blockchain projects,” according to crypto analyst Dovey Wan. And Huawei last year launched a global blockchain cloud service, on which businesses could develop and launch blockchain dapps.
The partnership could see the Chinese government make use of Huawei’s technology as they digitize the Renminbi.
The “memorandum of cooperation” was signed after Vice President Fan Yifei visited Huawai’s chairman Xu Zhijun at headquarters in Shenzhen today.
Earlier that day, the pair had attended the China Financial Development Forum, where Huawei showed off its latest financial technology. Hou Jinlong, Huwaei’s president of Cloud & AI Products and Services, delivered a keynote speech at the forum, and argued that products like distributed databases, computer chips, and 5G, are “creating a new era of financial technology.”
China isn’t the only one making waves. Last week, an association of over 200 German banks called for a digital Euro. The race is on.