Tencent: China Would Welcome Metaverse, With Caveats 

One of China’s biggest companies says it expects the government to allow the metaverse to operate in the country, assuming the companies behind it follow the rules. 

According to Reuters, Tencent Holdings, the social media giant that is China’s largest company by market value, discussed the metaverse in an earnings call Wednesday, saying it has potential for gaming business opportunities.

However, Tencent’s president says that a Chinese version of the metaverse — the game-like immersive digital experience enabled by virtual and augmented technology — would look considerably different from the metaverse found elsewhere. 

“There’s a lot of technologies that’s related to the development of games as well as for the metaverse,” Martin Lau told analysts.

Read more: Tech Giants Moving to Vastly Expand and Monetize the Metaverse 

Interest in the metaverse has ballooned since Mark Zuckerberg — who recently christened Facebook as “Meta Platforms Inc” — said he would build a metaverse. Disney and Microsoft have said they have their own metaverse projects in the works.

And many brands and retailers have been using the virtual world to compete for consumer attention for some time, as PYMNTS reported earlier this week. 

For example, there’s Nike, which recently filed seven new intent-to-use applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for several of its high-profile trademarks, including “Just Do It,” “Air Jordan” and its “swoosh” logo.  

The sneaker titan says it hopes to use the patents to sell virtual goods and entertainment services, like downloadable virtual footwear, clothing and equipment.

Learn more: Brands Prepare to Take Competition Virtual as Metaverse Goes Mainstream 

How would this play out in China? 

“The Chinese government will be in support of the development of such technologies as long as the user experience is actually provided under the regulatory framework,” said Lau. 

As Reuters notes, tech investors have expressed some concerns about how the metaverse might develop in China, with its tightly-controlled internet, bans on cryptocurrency trading and recent crackdowns on big companies, Tencent among them. 

But Lau told the investors that while China would set up its own rules governing the metaverse, this was “not fundamentally averse to the development of metaverse.”