[We should] increase our efforts to cultivate … [metaverse] talent, like attracting metaverse businesses from leading domestic or even international enterprises to settle in Xiamen … or promoting cooperation between schools … through resource sharing or joint curriculum development.

加大培育的力度,像国内甚至国际上一些头部企业,吸引他们把元宇宙业务部门可以放到厦门来发展,进一步去推动校校之间的合作,资源的共享,课程共建等等这种人才联合培养。

Guo Shihui, Xiamen University’s School of Information Science and Engineering, April 2022

Another Chinese city jumps deeper into the metaverse, this time Xiamen, with a new three-year action plan (here, here, and here) to expand its metaverse industry.

Jointly published by the Xiamen Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology and the Xiamen Municipal Big Data Administration on March 18, 2022, the “Xiamen City Metaverse Industry Development Three-Year Action Plan, 2022-2024” (厦门市元宇宙产业发展三年行动计划) includes five areas of focus:

(1) Create a new industrial ecosystem by 2024 that cultivates metaverse innovation;

(2) Attract revenue-generating enterprises that have mastered key metaverse technologies;

(3) Encourage enterprises, universities, and research institutes to conduct collaborative R&D on key metaverse technologies;

(4) Design metaverse application scenarios, including some with Xiamen specific elements; and

(5) Improve regulatory governance of the metaverse, including the formation of a metaverse industry alliance.

Note: The metaverse was not designated a New Type Infrastructure (NTI) category or subcategory in April 2020, but many of the underlying technologies supporting its development are NTI categories.