China renews effort to install home-grown operating systems
Source: Andrea Chen
Microsoft's tablet computer and Windows 8 software on display in Shanghai. China hopes to phase out the use of Windows and install its own operating system on government computers. Photo: AFP
The mainland has renewed a push to install “made in China” operating systems on government computers to free the country from relying on the foreign alternatives, media there reported yesterday.
One of the country’s top computer science engineers, Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Tencent that he has received positive comments from “high-ranking officials” for his proposal to phase out foreign computer operating systems in government departments.
“I cannot say anything explicitly what their comments are … The official message regarding internet security has always been clear. The establishment of the new Internet Security Group [in February this year] an example [of the message],” Ni, who has played a substantial role in developing the home-grown system, said.
The replacement schedule is yet to be finalised, but Beijing hopes to reach “a prominent primary goal” by 2020, the Beijing Times today quoted another source close to the matter as saying.
According to the source, the mainland government is also considering phasing out foreign-made computer chips and software use by state-owned enterprises and local governments.
The country has seen a renewed urgency to develop its own operating system in fear of overseas cyberattacks. Beijing complained that hundreds of millions of domestic computers had been hacked or under surveillance after the US accused several PLA members of hacking into American corporations.
In May, the mainland procurement authority, in charge of supplies and equipment for the government, said in its latest tender for computers that models installed with Windows 8 operating system would not be accepted.
People’s Daily has also published lengthy signed commentaries saying the prevailing use of the foreign operating systems in the mainland imposes a great threat on internet security. But in the eyes of some mainland professionals, the home-grown operating systems could be more vulnerable than the mainstream foreign systems. “A new system usually contains more security bugs than an old system,” Liu Qing , an information security expert based in Shanghai, told the South China Morning Post in August. “And if the new system has few users, many of these bugs can stay there for a long time, if not forever. That makes infiltration easy.”
Mainland space scientists also told the Post they were likely to continue working with the Windows system because their projects need reliable and stable software.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a report earlier this year that the home-grown operating systems accounted for less than 1 per cent of the domestic market, with most of the mainland users sticking to foreign products.
Red Flag, one of the country’s largest computer operating system and software developers, declared bankruptcy this year after the government cut its subsidies.
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