China’s Huawei recently released its new operating system called Harmonyos, next to its hardware devices. Among other upgrades, Harmonyos is next to support the China Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Huawei aims to promote widespread adoption of digital currencies. The brand is one of the top smartphone brands in China and is said to cater to about a billion users – with the possibility of wide access to E-CNY and accelerate its coverage. E-CNY is also known as Digital People (RMB).
China has been accelerating efforts to develop and test its CBDC. By representing fiat currency on the blockchain, CBDC transactions are recorded on the blockchain network, creating a permanent and immutable ledger. This improves the transparency and reliability of CBDC transactions.
A report from Cointelegraph said a report from Chinese authorities cites reports from local Chinese publications, so there is no need for Chinese Huawei device users to install CBDC applications released by the authorities. This integration is expected to strengthen financial monitoring supervised by the People’s Bank of China.
In April 2022, the country conducted CBDC trials in 23 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, to enable residents of these cities to pay for goods and services with E-CNY.
In July 2023, China began offline payments through E-CNY tests to cater to businessmen and citizens living in areas with low network connectivity. In the same year in November, the standard chartered banks entered China’s CBDC trial.
An recent survey of the CBDC by the CFA Institute said emerging markets such as India and China have broader recognition in other Asia-Pacific and other Asia-Pacific regions. The report notes that 70% of users surveyed in China favor the launch of CBDC.
Huawei’s participation in China’s Web3 ecosystem has always been consistent with the position of the country’s government.
Although the tech giant has expressed support for E-CNY CBDC, it has also recently joined a newly formed organization that aims to set standards for Web3 technologies such as Metaverse and NFT. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies have been banned in China since 2021.
