In this aerial photo taken on July 29, 2019, residents and tourists visit the Feicui Lake tourism resort to spend their leisure time at dusk in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province. (Xinhua/Zhang Duan)

 
Local governments of China are starting to include the metaverse in their government work reports for 2022, indicating potential government support for the nascent yet extremely popular concept in the coming months. 

Hefei, a city in East China's Anhui Province, said in its recent government work report that the city will support future industries such as the metaverse, superconductivity and precision medicine. 

The city will also create a batch of leading enterprises, technologies and advanced products in those areas, the work report noted. 

Similarly, the city of Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province said it will be speeding up digital industrial development in its government work report, which was read out by the city's mayor on Tuesday. The city aims to push the integration of the real economy with tech industries related to the metaverse, big data and cloud computing. 

The city will also establish the nation's new-generation artificial intelligence (AI) innovative development pilot zone, as well as setting up five digital economic industrial parks. 

Meanwhile, a Shanghai government official also said during a press conference on Wednesday that the city will actively lay out new business areas such as the metaverse, digital economy and green low-carbon industries. 

China's local governments are moving to announce plans for metaverse industrial development at a time when the metaverse has become a popular concept both in China and abroad. China's leading tech giants including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent all hope to get a head start with the metaverse by methods such as registering metaverse trademarks or launching relevant apps. 

Fu Liang, an independent tech analyst, said that as the metaverse concept includes hardcore technologies such as AI and virtual humans, it is important that local governments should take advantage of the concept and roll out policies to support relevant technologies. 

"Local governments can roll out policies to attract leading tech companies and relevant talent, technologies and supply chains to the city to create a scale effect," Fu said. 

According to Fu, many metaverse-related technologies can integrate with real industries to achieve better efficiency, such as the use of virtual human and AI technologies in remote education. 

Metaverse technologies can also help update traditional applications like virtual fitting of clothes, Fu said. 

Cao Yin, managing director of the Shanghai-based Digital Renaissance Foundation, said that it's a trend for China's services to become digitalized in the future, but local governments should also see to it that traditional laborers don't face large-scale unemployment during such a wave. 

"So far I have not seen local governments or companies that have raised proposals for how metaverse industries can serve the interests of the mass population, but I think this should be an issue they consider while pushing the development of this novel industry," Cao said.