The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper, the PLA Daily, proposed this week that the military’s adoption of blockchain technology could enable it to reward soldiers with digital currency tokens, the South China Morning Post reports.
The PLA Daily reportedly suggested the idea as a way to help manage the army and drive innovation. The proposal suggests the creation of a cryptocurrency reward system that would tie reward tokens to various performance metrics involving training, the completion of tasks, specialized skills, and other criteria.
The PLA Daily proposal comes just weeks after the nation’s leader, President Xi Jinping, offered positive remarks about blockchain technology and urged his country to redouble its efforts to invest in and develop the new technology:
“More efforts should be made to strengthen basic research and boost innovation capacity to help China gain an edge in theories, innovation and industries of the emerging field.”
The PLA Daily noted that the army’s adoption of blockchain technology could provide other advantages as well, offering higher-level encryption and secure storage for classified military information that would enable secrets to be distributed in a controlled way without being copied. The article also suggested that the PLA could benefit from using blockchain to improve human resource management, store personal data, and enhance logistics management.
