China to start using blockchain to collect taxes and send invoices

Blogger Ref   http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics


China has just announced that it will use blockchain technology for social taxation and issuing electronic invoices. This is just the latest example of the broad array of applications possible for the technology.

Blockchain In China

The Chinese government listed blockchain in its “Thirteenth Five-Year” National Informatization Plan from 2015, and since that time the nation has been working diligently toward incorporate the technology into daily life. The tech’s inclusion in the plan signals the importance China has attached to it, and this was just confirmed by the government’s announcement that it “will utilize blockchain technology for social taxation and electronic invoice issuance matters.”

This is a major development, and given that the Chinese economy is the world’s largest, with a 2016 GDP of over RMB 70 trillion (approximately U.S. $10.4 trillion), this should be an interesting test case for the implementation of blockchain technology. China has already launched a test of its own cryptocurrency based on the technology, so these initiatives should be able to build on each other.

Furthermore, we should also see implementation at the city level in China, as several local and provincial governments have recently promulgated pro-blockchain policies. In fact, a smart cities initiative has already enticed a Chinese automaker to integrate the tech into its business model. Additionally, blockchain-based industrial parks have gone up in Chengdu, Hangzhou, and other major cities, and agencies at different levels of government have created blockchain R&D teams.

Blockchain Technology Applications

This latest development in China is a good example of how blockchain technology can be used in a broad array of applications. Blockchain tech has been proposed for use in elections do to its potential for both transparency and security. It’s these features that make it appealing for taxation as well.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3psxs3gyf8

Governments aren’t the only ones exploring the tech’s applications. Walmart has started experimenting with a blockchain database that would protect consumers from contaminated food products as well as guard against product waste. Toyota is using blockchain to get its self-driving cars on the road faster, and the company plans to give customers access to their own data the same way.

Moving forward, we will see more and more innovative uses of blockchain technology as its potential is more fully realized. Transparency and security are both absolute essentials in a digital age, and China appears to be recognizing that need and putting this powerful tech to use through policy.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

References:
Coinfox

Concerns grow over China's 'nightmarish' social credit score system

 

Oct 27, 2015/Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

National database will be set up to rate each citizen's trustworthiness – but does it go too far?

Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

China is preparing to introduce a controversial credit score system which ranks each citizen's trustworthiness based on a variety of financial and social factors.
The Social Credit System (SCS) is still in its trial stages, with the government planning on creating a national database by the end of 2020.
Citizens and organisations will be ranked not just on their financial reliability but also on their social interactions and consumer spending, the BBC's Celia Hatton reports.  This information will then be shared between public institutions.
The exact details remain unclear, but the system reportedly takes a variety of things into account, including points on a person's driving licence, products they buy and how they are evaluated at work.
Rogier Creemers, who studies Chinese media policy and political change at the University of Oxford, agrees that the planned measures go well beyond establishing financial creditworthiness.

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"All that behaviour will be integrated into one comprehensive assessment of you as a person, which will then be used to make you eligible or ineligible for certain jobs, or social services," he told the New Scientist.
One of the main pilot projects is currently being run by Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Perhaps most controversially, the company openly admits that it judges the types of products shopper buy online, the BBC says.
"Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility," said Li Yingyun, Sesame's technology director.
The company then rewards people with high credit scores with perks such as a prominent dating profile on the Baihe matchmaking site to VIP reservations with hotels and car rental companies.
The system has prompted criticism from many outside of the country, including American Civil Liberties Union policy analyst Jay Stanley, who labelled the programme "nightmarish".
But others believe an innovative and comprehensive credit rating system is sorely needed in China. "Many people don't own houses, cars or credit cards in China, so that kind of information isn't available to measure," explains technology blogger Wen Quan.
Creemers, who was responsible for translating publicly released documents about the SCS, said the Big Brother fears raised about the system are typical of Western media's coverage of China.
"Pretty much anything China does makes people panicked," he said. "And many times we don't recognise that we are doing similar things."

Q&A: What yuan devaluation means for China, other countries

 

By JOE McDONALD and PAUL WISEMAN 5 hours ago  Yahoo Finance/ August 12th 2015 /Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

                  

           

FILE - In this March 15, 2012 file photo, a Chinese woman poses for photos near a sculpture depicting a Chinese yuan note at an art district in Beijing, China. China devalued its tightly controlled currency on Tuesday, Aug. 11,2015, following a slump in trade, triggering the yuan's biggest one-day decline in a decade. The central bank said the yuan's 1.3 percent fall was due to a change aimed at making its exchange rate controls more market-oriented. But any change raises the risk of tensions with China's trading partners. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

                                                     

BEIJING (AP) — China rattled global financial markets by devaluing its currency in what it said was an effort to make its exchange rate more market-oriented. The yuan's value declined 1.9 percent on Tuesday, its biggest one-day drop in a decade, and dropped a further 1.6 percent on Wednesday. The move could help Chinese companies by making their products less expensive in global markets. U.S. stocks sank, partly on fears about a worsening economic slowdown in China.

Related Stories

1. China's currency slides after Beijing announces devaluation Associated Press
2. How the dollar’s rise led to the yuan devaluation MarketWatch
3. Yuan devaluation boosts Chinese shares, hurts other markets AFP
4. China's yuan slides in value after Beijing alters controls Associated Press
5. China lets yuan fall further, fuels fears of currency war Reuters

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WHAT DID CHINA DO?

China doesn't let its currency trade freely in financial markets as the United States does. Instead, it links the yuan's value to a basket of currencies the composition of which is secret but is believed to be dominated by the U.S. dollar. Then it restricts trading to a band 2 percent above or below a daily target set by the People's Bank of China. On Tuesday, the central bank set the target 1.9 percent below Monday's level, the biggest one-day change in a decade. It also made a technical change to give market forces more influence in determining the yuan's value: Its daily target will now be based on the previous day's closing value and on currency supply and demand in the market. That change will allow the yuan to make bigger, faster moves up or down and better reflect investors' outlook on the prospects for China and its currency, said David Dollar, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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WHY DID CHINA DEVALUE ITS CURRENCY?

The People's Bank of China said it acted because the yuan has been rising even when market forces say it should be falling. Worried Chinese have been moving money out of the country, putting downward pressure on the yuan. Yet the yuan has remained up anyway because of its link to the dollar, which has been rising. An overvalued yuan has hurt Chinese exporters by making their products more expensive overseas. In July, Chinese exports plunged 8.3 percent year over year. China's economy already needed help. The economy is expected to grow less than 7 percent this year, its slowest rate since 1990, and could decelerate even more next year. The stock market has been in a freefall since June.

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HOW WILL CHINA'S TRADING PARTNERS BE AFFECTED?

Investors fear the worst. U.S. stocks sank Tuesday, dragged down by falling shares in such big exporters. In theory, a weaker yuan could reduce exports of U.S. goods to China, already down nearly 5 percent this year through June. American politicians, who have long charged that China keeps its currency artificially low to give its exporters an edge, denounced the devaluation. But economists doubt that a one-day 2 percent drop in the yuan, which is a move China has called a one-time event, will do much damage to exports from the United States or other countries.

"Two percent is no big deal," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "Ten percent over the next few months would be a big deal." Economists didn't see Beijing's move as an effort to reduce the yuan to an artificially low level. Rather, they perceived an attempt by China to catch up to an economic reality that dictates a cheaper yuan. And the plan to let market forces play a bigger role is something the U.S. government itself has called for.
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MIGHT THE FEDERAL RESERVE DELAY A RATE HIKE?

Probably not. True, a cheaper yuan hurts U.S. exporters and likely depresses U.S. inflation, which is already below the annual 2 percent rate the Fed targets. But Tuesday's move wasn't big enough by itself to make much difference. So the Fed is likely to go ahead, possibly at its September meeting, and raise the short-term rate it controls, which has been pinned near zero since 2008. The U.S. economy grew at a steady 2.3 percent annual from April through June, and U.S. unemployment has fallen to a seven-year low 5.3 percent. If the U.S. economy continues to look healthy, wrote JP Morgan Chase economist Michael Feroli, "the yuan move will largely be a sideshow " by September's Fed meeting.

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Wiseman contributed from Washington.

Will capitalism clean up the world?

World leaders gathering in New York to reach a global agreement on climate change have big money behind them

Formerly better known for building coal-fired stations, China has closed and cancelled scores of them, mainly to combat the air pollution that kills some 250,000 a year  Photo: AFP/Getty Images

By Geoffrey Lean

8:30PM BST 19 Sep 2014/Telegraph/ Blog Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

              

It all feels a bit familiar as, five years after the Copenhagen debacle, world leaders gather in New York on Tuesday to talk about reaching a global agreement on tacking climate change. The summit is expected to launch another long trek towards a treaty at the end of next year.

But this time almost everything is different from 2009, when the talks failed. Economics are figuring larger than ecology this year. Some of the most obstructive countries in Copenhagen are now pushing hardest for a treaty, while some of the keenest back then look like they’re dragging now. And – though environmentalists don’t like admitting it – the world is making progress through adopting a suggestion from the much-reviled George W Bush.

There are, of course, some things that stay much the same. Global emissions of greenhouse gasses continue unabated: this month, the World Meteorological Organisation reported that they grew at their fastest in three decades last year, and are now at record levels. And Christiana Figueres, UN chief of the treaty negotiations, warned again that time to curb them is running out.

Nevertheless, the buzz is more about expanding economic opportunities than impending ecological disaster, real though that may be. The key report published this week in preparation for the summit was not from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or any of the usual suspects, but rather by leaders of the IMF, Bank of England, OECD, China Development Bank, World Bank and businesses usually treated as enemies by greenies. Its message? Tackling climate change can help, not harm, economic growth.

Hard cash increasingly says so too. Last year there was greater worldwide investment in renewable energy than in fossil fuels for the fourth year in a row, as the cost of solar and windpower tumbles. The worldwide market in low carbon goods and services exceeds £3.4 trillion a year and often outperforms the rest of the global economy. No country has seen the opportunity more clearly than China, now the world’s biggest renewables investor. Formerly better known for rapidly building coal-fired stations, it has closed and cancelled scores of them, mainly to combat the air pollution that kills some 250,000 Chinese a year.

The main obstacle to progress in Copenhagen, China is now taking the lead in calling for action - along with that other erstwhile bugbear, America. Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, have made securing a climate treaty a legacy issue. The president, by taking executive action to get round an obstructive Congress, and aided by the rapid expansion of shale gas, is bringing down US emissions.
India’s recent elections – says Britain’s Energy Secretary, Ed Davey - have “changed the mood” in another traditionally reluctant nation. Navendra Modi, the new prime minister, boosted renewables while serving as chief minister of Gujerat, and Davey says he “has the will and commitment” to do the same nationally.
By contrast, the EU - which led the push for change in Copenhagen – has been growing less enthusiastic, and the new president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, seems determined to downgrade the issue.
The emerging agreement, too, is totally different from the one on the Copenhagen table. That sought to set a global ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions and then divide them between nations. This one starts at the other end, with governments pledging what they think they can achieve – a concept originally advanced by George W Bush.
For the first time all nations, including the smallest and least polluting, will join in. But the scheme has an obvious flaw. It’s most unlikely that the pledges will be nearly enough to head off serious climate change; PricewaterhouseCoopers has calculated that international efforts would have to increase fivefold to do so.
But it is the best that is reasonably achievable. And the, not unrealistic, hope is that – once a clear signal is given that the future is low carbon – the competitive power of capitalism will rapidly cause the world to exceed the targets.
Yet, disappointingly, Modi, China’s president Xi Jinping, and chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany won’t be at the New York summit. Inevitably their absence diminishes it – but, equally, it opens up an opportunity for David Cameron. Every British prime minister for the past 35 years has played a central, constructive – and often crucial – role in climate negotiations; Cameron, more than any since Margaret Thatcher, firmly believes in their importance.
He has, of course, been pretty quiet on the issue of late. But, as the last week north of the Border has shown, critical times call for the courage of prime ministerial convictions.

Ecuador gives details of new digital currency

30 August 2014 Last updated at 00:44 BBC News   Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

The central bank says the electronic currency will make life easier for consumers

The Ecuadorean government has released more details of its plans to create what it calls the world's first digital currency issued by a central bank.

Central bank officials say the electronic money, as yet unnamed, will start circulating in December.
The new money will be used alongside the existing currency in Ecuador, the US dollar.
President Rafael Correa has said the digital currency will help those who cannot afford traditional banking.
Central bank officials say the electronic money will be used to pay government bureaucrats in a "hygienic manner".
The electronic currency is also designed to help poorer Ecuadoreans make and receive payments using mobile phone technology.
Such mobile payment schemes have become very popular in African countries where they are privately run.
Ecuador introduced the US dollar as its currency after a crippling bank crisis in 2000.

President Rafael Correa has denied any plans to replace the US dollar

Since then, the government has tripled social spending and the state is currently billions in debt, mostly to China which buys most of Ecuador's oil.
Analysts say the introduction of the electronic currency could be used to increase the money supply and devalue US dollar holdings - a first step towards abandoning the US dollar.
President Correa has denied this is the case.
Exchange rate "It will be interesting to see who controls the exchange rate," said Jeremy Booney - a product manager for Coindesk - a website for digital currency news.
"So when an Ecuadorean exchanges the digital currency for US dollars, is it going to be the government who sets the rate, or is it down to supply and demand?
"And the government could decide to put the digital currency up if it wants."
There are also challenges in persuading Ecuadoreans to use a digital currency, Mr Booney said.
"Bitcoin (a global digital currency) has faced huge challenges to get people around the world to use it, and that is a worldwide movement with thousands of developers working on it."
The new currency was approved by Ecuador's National Assembly last month. At the same time, stateless digital currencies like Bitcoin were banned.

Why Nations Fail

 

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?
Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.
Based on fifteen years of original research, Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

• China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West?
• Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
• What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

http://whynationsfail.com/table-of-contents/



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