China Blockchain Firms Now File Next to AI and Deepfakes

• China’s internet regulator has launched one national filing portal for blockchain, generative AI, algorithms and deep synthesis.
• The separate blockchain and algorithm filing systems have been shut down.
• Existing filing rules remain in force, and no new deadlines were announced.
• The consolidation leaves China’s restrictions on crypto trading, mining and token issuance unchanged.

China blockchain service providers now file their registration details through a single national portal that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s internet regulator, switched on Monday, sharing it with companies running generative AI, recommendation algorithms and deep-synthesis tools, the software used to generate or alter images, audio and video. The launch retires two standalone databases and gives Beijing one administrative view of technologies it treats as strategically sensitive. China’s restrictions on cryptocurrency trading and mining stay exactly where they were.

Two Databases Went Dark on Launch Day

The new platform carries the official name Internet New Technology and New Application Information Service Filing System and is hosted at the CAC’s national filing portal. Companies use it to submit filings, and the public can use it to look up which services are registered. Two older systems stopped accepting filings the same day: the Internet Information Service Algorithm Filing System and the Blockchain Information Service Filing Management System, which had handled blockchain registrations since 2019.

The announcement leaves several practical questions open. It sets no new registration deadline, describes no transition period and makes no change to the documents providers must submit, so the substantive obligations still come from the separate regulations that govern each technology.

Source: Cyberspace Administration of China

How China’s Filing Model Actually Works

The Chinese term for the process is beian, usually translated as filing, and the distinction from a license matters. A filing tells the regulator who runs a service, what it does and where its servers sit. It does not grant permission to offer financial products, and the regulator does not vouch for the service by accepting it. Under the Blockchain Information Service Management Regulations, a provider must file within 10 working days of starting service, the CAC has 20 working days to process a complete submission, and the resulting filing number has to appear prominently on the provider’s website or app.

Merging the portals solves a problem that has grown as products have started to cross categories. A chatbot that writes content onto a blockchain, or a trading app that pairs a ranking algorithm with AI-generated summaries, could fall under two or three regimes at once, and until Monday each regime had its own database. Housing everything in one system lets the CAC compare filings across technologies and spot gaps more quickly, while business partners and users get one place to check whether a service is registered. Nothing in the announcement suggests a single submission now satisfies every regime, though, and a company touching several categories should still expect separate obligations under each set of rules.

Seven Years of Layered Rules

Beijing has kept two tracks running since the late 2010s. Distributed-ledger technology gets state support and a formal registration route, while speculative crypto activity has been pushed out: the State Council moved against mining in May 2021, and the People’s Bank of China followed in September of that year by classifying crypto-related business activity as illegal financial activity. Monday’s portal sits entirely on the first track.

AI regulation has gone through similar layering. The 2023 interim measures on generative AI brought in obligations on personal data, lawful content and security assessments for services that can shape public opinion or mobilize people. Five days before the filing portal launched, China also presented a separate identity-registration platform for AI agents at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, built to give automated agents verifiable identities, with 20 organizations, among them Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and Baidu, signing an accompanying self-discipline pledge. The two systems are run separately, though they point in the same direction: Beijing wants every advanced digital service it supervises to be identifiable and on record.

Crypto Ban Untouched by the Overhaul

For digital-asset markets, the announcement contains nothing that changes access. Exchanges and trading remain prohibited on the mainland, the mining ban still stands, foreign platforms gain no new opening, and a registered blockchain project receives no right to issue tradable tokens. The CAC also announced no investment incentives or token approvals. Over time, a single standardized register could make compliance more predictable for enterprise blockchain projects in supply chains, government services and finance, though that depends on how the CAC administers the system in practice.

Existing Filers Wait on Migration Rules

The most immediate open question concerns the thousands of services already holding filing numbers under the retired systems. The CAC has not yet said whether those numbers carry over automatically, how applications that were pending when the old databases closed will be handled, or whether filing forms will be standardized across the four categories. Detailed operating guidance on those points would be the clearest sign of whether the consolidation cuts paperwork or simply moves it to a new address.

Readers looking for a Chinese route back into crypto will find it in Hong Kong, which keeps a separate legal system. The city licenses virtual-asset trading platforms through its Securities and Futures Commission and brought its Stablecoins Ordinance into force on August 1, 2025, creating a licensing regime for fiat-backed stablecoin issuers. Monday’s mainland portal does not apply there, and how far the two systems diverge on blockchain services will remain worth tracking as the CAC publishes its implementation details.