People walk by a sign of Blockchain Summit during the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2019 in June. Photo: IC

China has ramped up efforts to accelerate blockchain technology application in its financial sector, which analysts say will help small and medium-sized enterprises ease financing difficulties and facilitate business resumption after the coronavirus attack. 

To facilitate domestic firms in resuming work, China Everbright Bank released its blockchain-backed financing product Guangxintong in a joint effort with Ant Financial. 

Guangxintong helped a wine producer in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality solicit funding online which effectively resolved the firm's capital crunch, media reports said on Thursday.

Blockchain has broad prospects in such applications as transaction settlements, trade financing and transfers of property rights, said Wu Hao, an industry analyst based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. 

Blockchain technology has been widely employed by Chinese financial regulators, banks and fintech ventures, and the viral coronavirus to some extent accelerated the process of applying blockchain technology in the domestic financial industry, Wu told the Global Times on Thursday.

In February, the People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, unveiled a set of rules for blockchain applications in the financial sector. The new financial distributed ledger technology security specification is the first of its kind and aims to standardize the deployment of blockchain technology and guide the work of developers and service providers operating in the financial sector, analysts said.

China began to explore blockchain technology standardization in 2016, said Cao Peng, vice president of JD Digits and participated in the drafting of the specification, according to a report by the Economic Information Daily.

China's blockchain technology has developed rapidly in recent years. The PBC has for the first time combined distributed accounting technology with the financial sector to formulate comprehensive specifications, which will become the foundation for creating reliable blockchain technology and applications and will prompt the blockchain industry to avoid blind growth, Cao said.

Cao forecast that based on the new standards, blockchain technology will play a better role in financial insurance and corporate financing.

Apart from tightening regulations on technical standards, the PBC also strengthened efforts to push forward the growth of its blockchain trade finance platform, which was unveiled in Shenzhen in September 2018. 

The platform has carried out four types of business since its launch - multi-level financing of supply chain receivables, tax filing forms for external payments, a fast track for rediscounts, and international trade account supervision, the Xinhua News Agency said on Thursday.

The platform has recently acquired special funding of 32.35 million yuan ($4.64 million) for key research and development projects over the next three years.