China may have eschewed the cryptocurrency market, but it has already started racing to lead the league for other virtual assets. The Beijing-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) has decided to launch a national infrastructure to support Chinese NFT (non-fungible tokens)..

BSN explained, quoted by Chinese media, that the infrastructure, known as BSN-Distributed Digital Certificates (BSN-DDC), would offer "a diversified, transparent and trusted one-stop store for companies to create and manage their own NFTs" without resorting to the international market.

The fees can only be paid with fiat money and are extremely low, about five cents at the current exchange rate. BSN - which is backed by state telecom giant China Mobile, payments company China UnionPay and government "think tank" State Information Centre - expects the project to start at the end of March.

The 26 founding partners include Ernst & Young's blockchain unit, Digital Art Fair Asia, and the Hainan International Culture and Artwork Exchange Centre. Several Chinese giants are already in the NFT race: Alibaba, Tencent Holdings, JD.com and Baidu are some of the companies already selling these types of assets.

Decentralized platforms are illegal in China, where all internet systems are required to verify user identities and allow regulators to intervene in case of illicit activities. So to "overcome this problem, BSN turned to a technology known as 'open permission blockchain' (OPB), an adapted version that can be governed by a group appointed by regulators," explained He Yifan of BSN Red Date Technology in an interview with the Washington Post.