Tsinghua Financial Review Courier: blockchain or new boost in China's financial corner overtaking

Text: Zhang Xiaoyan, deputy dean of the Wudaokou Finance College of Tsinghua University, deputy dean of the Institute of Financial Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, and Guo Jiequn, Dean of MIT (China) Supply Chain Innovation Institute

Source: Wudaokou Finance College, Tsinghua University

The term FinTech comes from Finance and Technology, which means combining new technologies such as the Internet, big data, and intelligence with financial depth, using technology to drive finance, improving financial service efficiency, reducing risk levels, and reducing the gap in wealth distribution. With the technological innovation, its connotation has been extended to credit, payment, smart investment, insurance, asset management, blockchain and other fields, and the potential to help the financial industry innovation can not be underestimated.

At present, one of the most interesting directions in financial technology is the blockchain. Blockchain technology is centered on decentralization and can reconstruct the underlying architecture of the financial industry to achieve financial sharing. Compared with the traditional architecture, blockchain technology and digital currency can avoid the cumbersome centralized clearing and delivery process and realize de-intermediation; let the credit reporting agency directly retrieve the information data in the blockchain and simplify the credit information process; Importantly, blockchain technology can reduce credit risk and improve system traceability for a variety of business environments, including asset management, transfer, and especially trading environments that benefit the Internet. It is conceivable that the extensive and effective application of blockchain technology is of great significance to the orderliness of financial activities, the conservation of limited resources, and especially the improvement of the production efficiency of the real economy.

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At present, blockchain is the underlying technology of future financial technology has become a basic consensus. It has some unique characteristics that have changed some of the weaknesses in traditional finance. The specific performance is: dis-intermediation, also known as non-intermediation, in the financial market, the performance of expanding direct financing channels, reducing financing costs; decentralization, which is a more open and flat Equivalent information structure, through distributed computing, peer-to-peer improves transaction efficiency, and makes transaction information impossible to tamper with; customization makes financial services better close to user needs. The application of smart contracts enables blockchains to more effectively meet economic development needs. In summary, the application of blockchain is not only conducive to producing a more direct, more efficient and more targeted information, technology, service platform, but also conducive to a more fair market environment. This is in line with China's current concept of vigorously promoting inclusive finance, and it also provides a good opportunity for cornering overtaking in the Chinese financial market with weak financial infrastructure. At present, Chinese financial and non-financial institutions are actively researching and laying out blockchains and other financial technology. In the 2016 Global FinTech Enterprise Top 100 jointly released by KPMG and H2 Venture, a total of 8 Chinese companies were on the list. Among them, Ant Financial Service ranked first, and another three companies were among the top five. In February 2017, the digital bill trading platform based on blockchain technology promoted by the People's Bank of China achieved initial results and pushed the development of domestic digital currency into a new stage.

In general, based on the current market foundation of China's finance, further development, application and promotion of the potential development advantages of blockchain technology are of great significance to China's finance, and also to China's need to develop inclusive finance and improve market efficiency. Consistent. At the same time, China's development blockchain and other financial technologies also have unique space and advantages: from the user scale, as of the end of 2016, the population of Chinese netizens reached 731 million, more than the total number of Internet users in Europe and the United States; With the rapid development of reform and development over the past 30 years, China's per capita GDP has made great progress, and it ranks second in the world in terms of total volume. Direct investment in overseas countries also accounts for an important proportion of total world investment. From the perspective of policy supervision, So far, China's financial technology policy environment is relatively loose, and the restrictions on technology companies are relatively lower than those in Europe and the United States. However, the blockchain has just started, not perfect, and it is still relatively limited in the field of financial applications. So far, no mature cases have been produced. On the other hand, the development of blockchain technology and application also needs a supporting regulatory system. How to regulate blockchain application, improve industry self-discipline and integrate into international regulatory system is also an urgent problem for China's financial supervision.

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