China seen as having key role in helping Blockchain technology grow

China has the wherewithal to develop the Blockchain technology, said Emmanuel Viale, managing director of the European Accenture Technology Labs in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice in France.

Blockchain technology has gained attention largely because of the disruptive nature of one of its key applications, Bitcoin, Viale said.

Bitcoin has shown that a crypto-currency system can be run totally outside the traditional banking system by assembling technologies that enable trust to be built in what might otherwise be an untrustworthy environment, a public and fully decentralized network.

Two thirds of the global Bitcoin infrastructure is in China, and there are many talented technology people who have innovated with Bitcoin technology, Viale said, and that holds great hopes for the development of Blockchain technology.

For the biggest 10 investing banks last year, Blockchain technology helped eight of them reduce the cost of infrastructure by 30 percent, between $8 billion and $12 billion, he said.

Some startups in the West have been set up based on Blockchain technology, but there have been few instances of this in China, Viale said.

So how much potential Blockchain delivers to China depends on how venture capital helps companies to be set up and how regulations and the economic environment in the country improve so as to help the technology grow.