China has joined the global race to develop the metaverse. But as with the internet itself, the Chinese version could end up looking very different from the one envisioned by Western companies. The emergence of the world wide web in the 1990s led to predictions that it could accelerate a process of opening up and democratization in China. Instead, the country’s authorities created the so-called Great Firewall of China, inside which politically sensitive content is restricted from the intern