Industrial metaverse is expected to drive the market size of global smart manufacturing to exceed $540 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.35 percent from 2021 to 2025, said market research company TrendForce.

This growth can primarily be attributed to several factors. First, industrial applications take place in closed environments, and companies that utilize such applications have generally made good progress in terms of digital transformation, market intelligence provider Trend-Force said.

Furthermore, by utilizing simulation technologies, companies are able to significantly reduce their labor costs, project time and wasted resources, TrendForce added.

The Chinese government, which is well aware of the trend, is moving quickly to roll out favorable policies. Last month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly released a plan for the years 2022-26 with several other ministries to integrate VR technology with industrial applications.

Though it did not explicitly mention metaverse, the plan called for more efforts to create fundamental technologies that support immersive AR, VR and mixed reality experiences, all of which are aspects of metaverse.

The plan aims to grow the market size of China's VR industry beyond 350 billion yuan ($50.4 billion) by 2026, by which time it intends to have cultivated more than 100 enterprises with strong innovative ability and industrial influence.

The value of the VR market in China had exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2021, according to market consulting firm CCID Consulting.

Jia Shanshan, executive vice-general manager of the electronic information industry research center at CCID Consulting, said VR application is still dominated by consumer-oriented use such as in games and education. But industrial applications such as in manufacturing and medical care have also grown rapidly with the development of online economy over the past two years.

In a recent virtual reality conference in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, Wang Jiangping, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said, "The ministry will seize the window of opportunity of the VR industry to promote its integration with the real economy."

China currently has more than 10,000 enterprises engaged in VR-related business, the ministry said, adding that it will step up its push to promote typical, replicable industrial VR applications.

He Chao, secretary-general of the metaverse industry committee at the China Mobile Communications Association, said China highly values the role of metaverse in upgrading the real economy.

Controversies around metaverse still exist, but it is certain that Chinese companies will not miss out on the crucial technological shift it entails, He said.