Blockchain technology in China is now considered as a core national strategy. Political leaders, including Xi Jinping, have been promoting it. Regional governments have also enacted policies to promote their growth.

However, a shortage of blockchain talent, in part due to a lack of blockchain education, is pitching a shadow on China’s aspirations for this emerging technology.

To plant and sustain more blockchain human capital, China’s public and private sectors are now giving classes, creating research institutions, and building new university initiatives concentrated on this technology. The latest effort so far is the launch, scheduled for this fall, of China’s first blockchain bachelor’s degree program at Chengdu University of Information Technology (CUIT).

Notwithstanding these efforts, industry insiders suspect the amount of high-quality blockchain talent in China to endure small, and for Chengdu’s future blockchain graduates, employment prospects remain unknown.

As much as Chinese companies state they require and need more blockchain-educated young people in the workforce, China’s blockchain labor supply appears compelled by a cultural trait familiar to many societies, however particularly pervasive in East Asia: education snobbery.

According to industry insiders, blockchain companies favor hiring graduates from the mainland’s top-tier universities. Or applicants with work history at famous American companies such as Google.

But it’s not explicit that the alumni of elite Chinese education or brand-name Silicon Valley firms need to operate in blockchain in China. In the aftermath of China’s crackdowns on crypto, blockchain got tarred with a suspicious reputation, and much of the current tech labor force proceeds to despise Chinese blockchain jobs. 

High-quality blockchain talents need trust in and feel uncertain about China’s current blockchain industry, Helen Yu, Co-founder of HHJ Consulting, a headhunter and advisory company based in Beijing, told Forkast.