Bitcoin has been illegal in China for five years — trading and mining banned since 2021. But Beijing hasn't given up on the underlying technology; it just wants blockchain working for the state instead. On October 9, the Communist Party's Central Committee and the State Council released China's economic blueprint for 2026–2030 through Xinhua, and buried inside it is an explicit order to build a national blockchain network.
The document lays out 19 measures. Alongside the blockchain network sits a unified computing-power grid meant to link capacity across the country under the "East Data, West Computing" principle, shifting processing load from crowded coastal hubs to cheaper capacity inland. Several clauses deal with data rights: Beijing wants to clarify who owns information, let it be traded as an asset, and pilot cross-border data-sharing schemes.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies don't appear anywhere in the text, and that's not an oversight. The trading and mining ban stays exactly as it was. The new network is built for something else entirely: tracking supply chains, verifying carbon credits, storing government records, and running judicial smart contracts. Blockchain here is a tool for control and bookkeeping, not a venue for speculation.
Meanwhile another piece of China's digital infrastructure keeps expanding. By mid-August, 30 banks had been licensed to handle the digital yuan, eight of them added just recently. Put together with the blockchain plan, it paints a picture of a state assembling its own fully controlled digital economy, walled off from the open, decentralized networks the rest of the crypto market relies on.
There's friction brewing on the outside too. The U.S. Justice Department has labeled China a "country of concern" over data security, which could complicate cross-border data flows involving American firms. The plan itself tells officials to avoid inflating economic bubbles — a caution that reads like a direct response to past digital booms gone wrong.
