China to set standards for the metaverse because it's not sure what one is

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced Monday it will form a working group to set metaverse standards - becuase without them, metaversal matters have meandered.

Beijing’s latest regulatory effort seeks to accelerate standardization of whatever a metaverse is, and keep up with the pace of international development, said MIIT.

The ministry expained it has concerns about use of sensitive personal information in metaverses, proliferation of digital identities, pyramid schemes, and online violence. Bad infosec is also a concern.

It's therefore time to clean house.

“Some capital and enterprises have taken advantage of the popularity of the metaverse to speculate, resulting in its concept far from the actual value, which restricts the development of the metaverse industry to a certain extent,” said MIIT.

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The working group will include experts from enterprises, scientific research institutes, universities and unspecified metaverse mavens.

Among the jobs the group will tackle are formulating basic general standards such as metaverse terminology and reference architectures, key technical standards such as metaverse identity systems, digital content generation, and cross-domain interoperability.

Job number one is development of metaverse standards related to industrial manufacturing. MIIT said earlier this month that the development of the industrial metaverse, in particular, will transform the manufacturing industry, which it calls “one of the important points of new industrialization.”

The statement was made as MIIT laid out its three-year vision for the metaverse. It named the metaverse as one of several tech sectors in which China will seek global leadership, with standards-setting therefore a key activity.

The Ministry also published an action plan with three major actions, one of which is improving the industrial standard system. The other two are to improve innovation support capabilities and build first-class infrastructure. ®