China’s Henan state-owned investment group sets up US$22 mln metaverse fund

Henan Cultural Tourism Investment Group, a state-owned investment enterprise in Central China’s Henan province, has set up a 150 million yuan (US$21.7 million) private equity investment fund to finance metaverse ventures.

See related article: China’s Suzhou city joins other regions in the country seeking to be metaverse hub

Fast facts

• The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Henan said on Thursday in a social media post that the fund, formed in April, aims to integrate resources in the culture and tourism industry and boost the development of virtual reality and metaverse sectors to build “internationally competitive digital industrial clusters.”
• Henan aims to expand its metaverse industry to 30 billion yuan by 2025, the province’s government stated in an action plan published last October.
• Last August, Shanghai released a similar strategy to foster the metaverse industry in the city, aiming to generate 350 billion yuan in revenue by 2025.
• In January, a delegate of Shanghai’s Two Sessions, the city’s most influential annual political meetings, called for more regulatory efforts toward the supervision and development of metaverse.
• China banned cryptocurrency transactions in September 2021, but it has been bullish on the metaverse. Governments of Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Jinan and Suzhou cities, as well as the provincial governments of Zhejiang and Henan, have all released plans for metaverse expansion.

See related article: China regulator says NFT-related complaints skyrocketed in 2022

Source