According to a joint study by China's state owned media Xinhua and financial data platform Rhino Data, the total amount spent in blockchain investment deals in 2019 has accounted for 24.4 billion Chinese yuan ($3.6 billion).
Officially released by Xinhua Finance, the study says that that figure dropped 40.8% in 2019 compared to 2018.
In October 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping encouraged the country to accelerate blockchain adoption. The study result that there was a significant drop in blockchain spending in China was largely unexpected and contradictory to expert predictions.
Throughout 2019, the country registered 245 investment and financing deals, which is almost 60% less than in 2018.
As part of that study by Xinhua, it was discovered that early-stage investments, including Series A funding rounds, made up 43.3% in 2019.
Interestingly, the proportion of strategic investment and mergers and acquisitions in second half of 2019 increased considerably. Also, up to 292 institutions have participated in these investments. So far, cities including Shenzhen, Beijing, and Hangzhou have attracted the most significant blockchain projects.
In China, both the value and number of blockchain investment deals have significantly increased since 2017, the report notes. As such, the year of 2018 remains the peak in terms of blockchain investment spending for China so far, with over 600 deals taking place across the year, while 2017 accounted for just 168 deals, according to the data.
On the other hand, recently the Chinese government has made a lot of progress in the development of digital Yuan alongside actively funding various blockchain activities and initiatives. The People's Bank of China had researched the central digital currency for over five years. It accelerated developments after Facebook announced its Libra project. The bank completed its first real-world pilot of the digital Yuan in December 2019.
In late 2019, Xinhua predicted that China's spending on blockchain technology will exceed $2 billion in 2023.