China partners with Malaysia for Xinghuo-Zetrix blockchain research

The Chinese government has selected MY EG Services Bhd’s (MYEG) blockchain infrastructure Zetrix to be a component of its government-to-government collaborative research programme that is set to lead to commercialisation.

It said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia that Zetrix, a layer-1 public platform developed by MYEG, is the international super node for China’s national blockchain Xinghuo.

The government’s collaboration with Universiti Malaya (UM) and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) as its strategic partners, is expected to strengthen the Malaysia-China trade and data interoperability. This is also projected to further propel Malaysia into the Web3 era.

“The China-Malaysia government-to-government cooperation covers four sectors, namely public health such as vaccine research and development, artificial intelligence, information and communications technology (blockchain, big data, and others) as well as space remote sensing technology,” it said.

According to MYEG, UM and CAICT’s project called, “Research on Key Issues of China-Malaysia Transborder Blockchain Infrastructure and Pilot Applications” was selected as part of the intergovernmental collaboration between Malaysia and China in the field of science, technology and innovation.

Malaysia is one of the 14 countries participating in the programme that is initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.

The research, MYEG said, would include proposing a system that would prevent fraud in the supply chain processes using blockchain technology for cross-border trade.

In a statement, the Chinese government said that this kind of a system comprises smart contracts collaboration supported across the multiple parties that are involved in China-Malaysia trade. These include the Belt and Road Initiative countries.

The system would also enable all stakeholders to collaborate in cross-organisational information exchanges, all backed by a secure, unalterable audit trail.

Wong Thean Soon, the co-founder of Zentrix, has expressed confidence that the commercialisation of blockchain through the use of this platform would bring many benefits to Malaysia.

He added that the strategic cooperation will further strengthen the Malaysia-China trade and investment relations, through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is the main driving force in integrating the regional economy with the use of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technology as well as cloud computing technology and big data analysis.

Soon said that the project is also expected to spur talent exchanges between the two countries. This will lead to a sharing of knowledge and expertise via study visits and other intellectual exchanges.