Shanghai has unveiled plans to boost its tourism and culture metaverse projects, generating an annual revenue of around 50 billion Yuan ($6.9 billion) by the end of 2025.

Shanghai is planning to build around 30 culture and tourism metaverse projects focused on smart tourism, including digital artwork, virtual performances, amongst others, according to the plans proposed by the city’s municipal administration of culture and tourism.

The project includes incorporating metaverse technologies into Shanghai’s tourist attractions, allowing visitor interaction with sites through augmented reality, Forkast News reports.

In addition, the city aims to promote digital artwork development on blockchains, focus on digital artwork integration on platforms including video games and provide support to metaverse entertainment businesses.

Shanghai’s plans focus on blockchain, AI (artificial intelligence) and extended reality among the main technologies for the development of the metaverse. 

The culture and tourism industry is just one part of the city’s metaverse objectives. Indeed, in July last year, Shanghai said metaverse technology is just one of three “new tracks” within its economic development, together with low-carbon industries and intelligent terminals.

The city aims to construct a metaverse industry with an annual revenue of 350 billion Yuan ($52 billion) by the end of 2025 and has a $1.4 billion metaverse industrial fund.

As well as Shanghai, other cities throughout the country, such as Zhengzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing, have also published plans for metaverse developments.

In addition, policymakers are also looking into public services and administration using the metaverse, the Forkast News report adds.

Earlier this month, the country’s Ministry of Education published a research paper that includes metaverse use cases such as the introduction of virtual classrooms as well as safeguarding students’ qualifications on chain as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).