Five Chinese ministries have set out an action plan to develop a domestic metaverse for connected devices in the home, connected cars, and industry. The five ministries, which include China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), seek to build three to five industrial clusters around the technology by 2025.

The plan, published in the CCP flagship publication Global Times, seeks to create five leading global companies in the metaverse sector, by developing and integrating AI, blockchain, VR and connected technologies.

In addition to the MIIT, the plans were drawn up by the education and tourism ministries, the State Council’s enterprise regulator, and the country’s National Radio and Television Administration.

In order to achieve the goals, the ministries have developed five major programmes including improving innovation and integration of metaverse dependent technologies such as AI, blockchain, cloud computing and VR.

The initial focus looks likely to be on applying the metaverse to home appliances and to creating an industrial ecosystem around Industry 4.0 and industrial metaverse. But metaverse applications in automobiles, ships and aerospace are also slated for development.

“China’s digital economy has reached a new stage of development, and the digital technologies and platforms accumulated over the years have laid a good foundation for the development of the metaverse,” Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.