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Beijing Information Industry Association (北京信息产业协会) is a non-profit professional body approved and registered on October 26, 1985, founded jointly by Beijing-based organizations engaged in information technology research, development, transmission, education, production, sales, and information and network services. Within the digital human field, the association functions primarily as a standards and coordination organization rather than a technology developer. It convened expert panels that worked through the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies to define foundational terms including "metaverse" (元宇宙), "avatar" (化身), and "digital human" (数字人), releasing these definitions in national-standard form for public comment. To guide the orderly growth of the sector, it established a Metaverse Expert Committee (元宇宙专家委员会), whose founding members include companies such as Global Digital Creations (环球数码创意控股有限公司), and it has hosted related events such as an AIGC and Metaverse Development International Conference and a cultural-tourism metaverse forum. Through this terminology, standards-setting, and convening work, the association occupies an upstream governance and ecosystem-building role in China's virtual human and metaverse landscape.
(Beijing Information Industry Association (北京信息产业协会) and Beijing Informatization Association (北京信息化协会) are two distinct Beijing-based non-profit IT bodies whose near-identical English names are easily confused but should not be treated as the same entity, and both have taken on digital-human standards roles upstream of the industry rather than building products. The difference lies in altitude: the Beijing Information Industry Association works at the conceptual and terminological level, defining foundational terms such as digital human, avatar, and metaverse through the national terminology apparatus and convening the sector through its Metaverse Expert Committee, whereas the Beijing Informatization Association works at the technical specification level, issuing concrete T/BIA group standards that prescribe requirements for large-model-driven digital human systems. In short, one governs what the concepts mean and the other governs how the systems should be built.)