Chinese broadcaster Shandong Television pursues NFT, metaverse projects as country’s media firms tap into virtual assets

Shandong Television plans to build its own blockchain infrastructure to support its digital collectibles, while developing ‘a series of metaverse products’

The provincial broadcaster’s foray into NFTs comes months after state-owned Xinhua announced the country’s first “news digital collectibles”

Reading Time:3 minutes

Chinese provincial broadcaster Shandong Television says its digital collectibles will revolve around the themes of cultural heritage, ancient architecture and natural scenery. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:30pm, 5 Apr 2022

The television network of eastern China’s Shandong province has started developing a marketplace for digital collectibles, as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are called in the world’s second-largest economy, becoming the country’s latest government-owned media enterprise to jump on the virtual asset bandwagon after Xinhua News Agency last December.

Broadcaster Shandong Television also plans to build its own blockchain infrastructure to support its digital collectibles, while developing “a series of metaverse products”, the network said in a statement published on Monday. It provided no timeline for these projects.

The provincial TV network said its digital collectibles will revolve around the themes of cultural heritage, ancient architecture and natural scenery. It touted the province’s rich Confucian culture and tourist hotspots such as Mount Tai, the highest point in Shandong at 1,545 metres high, as valuable resources for its virtual asset collection.

NFTs generally refer to unique strings of blockchain-registered data that represent a digital file’s ownership. As such, NFTs are considered valuable because people can buy and trade these digital assets like physical items.

A view of the skyline of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province. Photo: Shutterstock

Shandong Television’s foray into NFTs comes months after state-owned Xinhua announced the country’s first “news digital collectibles”. A total of 110,001 copies of selected news photos were released for free by Xinhua via its mobile app on Christmas Eve.

Xinhua’s digital collectibles include the Chinese Communist Party’s celebration of its 100th anniversary in July at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the country’s recent milestone of administering more than 2.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses nationwide.