China: Insurance Giant Ping An, Sanya City Gov’t to Build ‘Smart City’ with Blockchain

China’s Ping An Insurance Group, one of the world's largest insurance corporations, and the Sanya municipal government signed a strategic cooperation agreement for “Smart City” construction. The new project will be backed with blockchain tech, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud computing, the official state run press People’s Daily reported Nov. 14.

Ping An Group signed a strategic agreement with the Sanya Municipal People's Government to carry out comprehensive cooperation on financial investment and “Smart City” construction as a part of a major strategic urban development in China. The article states that one of the “core segments” of the smart city ecosystem will be “blockchain, [...] biometrics, and other technologies.”

Another governmental news agency, Xinhua News, reported that Ping An Group will invest 30 billion yuan (more than $4 billion) in Sanya “to develop smart city construction, financial products and services, and insurance fund utilization.”

Back this summer, the insurance conglomerate Ping An Group had released a "White Paper on Smart Cities," advocating for blockchain tech, AI, big data, and cloud computing, Cointelegraph reported Aug. 22.

This fall, a division of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, JD Finance, established the Smart City Research Institute aimed to facilitate the development of “smart city” construction with the use of AI, big data, and blockchain technologies as well, Cointelegraph wrote Sep. 29.

Also this week, the Chinese city of Loudi in the Hunan province launched a blockchain platform to store real estate data, allowing citizens to avoid bureaucratic processes when submitting documents to the local land, tax and real estate departments, Cointelegraph reported Nov. 13.