A market survey in China conducted jointly by PwC and VeChain shows that logistics, government and medical industries stand to benefit most from resorting to blockchain technology.
Traditional industries such as retail, education and science were found to be more optimistic about the potential of blockchain than new technology industries. These were followed by the manufacturing industry, service industry, IT or high-tech industry and media.
Logistics was seen as the leading industry to benefit from utilizing blockchain outside of finance, and ranks highest in terms of scope for innovative applications to create value. Government follows as the second most suitable area to put blockchain to use.
Medical and healthcare industries ranked third, due to their especially rigorous demands for authenticity verification relating to personal and medical records as well as drug information. This is expected to continue driving the application of blockchain across health industries.
China is perhaps the home to the world's second largest number of blockchain-based enterprises, after the U.S. Blockchain technology was listed on China's "13th Five-Year Plan" as a strategic cutting-edge technology.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) China Partner Chun Yin Cheung remarked, "A great many more enterprises will begin using blockchain when the technology is supported by comprehensive policy. When policy is established, enterprises that have already applied blockchain will have made substantial headway, and will stand to reap the benefits."
The world-wide survey titled "2018 Market Survey for (Non-financial) Application of Blockchain in China" was jointly conducted by means of focus group discussion from November to December 2017.
The respondents were mainly the clients of VeChain and PwC. They received more than 130 questionnaires, and held two focus group discussions engaging more than 40 respondents, from nearly 20 industries, involving more than 10 functional departments.
The quantitative research data came from people who had a considerable level of knowledge and research on Blockchain technology.
A total of 85.7 percent of respondents said a core feature of blockchain is that the technology is "tamper-resistant." More than half of respondents believe that blockchain will have a significant impact on the business community.
Among respondents who already implemented blockchain, 50 percent stated their use of the technology was for security traceability, more than any other field of application. More than 20 percent of them used blockchain for distributed data storage, identity authentication, shared data & application and supply chain management.
Meanwhile, 53.3 percent of those who implemented blockchain have already set up in-house blockchain R&D teams. Thirty percent of them were cooperating with blockchain start-ups, 13.3 percent were cooperating with well-known companies and 3.3 percent were investing in or acquiring external blockchain start-ups.
Those who have not implemented blockchain, are yet to decide on using of the technology, for lack of corresponding industry standards, and 10 percent indicated "no budget."
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