As tension grows between China and the United States, there is worry in Beijing that the conflict could end up further restricting Chinese access to American technology.
Of foremost concern is that despite decades of effort, China has yet to build a homegrown operating system good enough to replace Microsoft Windows. “Our operating system market is dominated by U.S. companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple," a recent report by state-run Xinhua News Agency said. “To fundamentally solve the problem of ‘being choked in [the] neck', creating a domestic operating system and supporting software and hardware ecosystem is a must."
To be fair, China is not alone. Other countries including Russia, Germany and South Korea have been trying to develop their own operating systems. But none of them have gotten very far yet.
Washington has already targeted China’s technology vulnerabilities. The U.S. Commerce Department has banned and cut off the Chinese tech giant from foreign chip manufacturers in May 2019 after adding it to the Export Administration Regulations Entity List. Just last week, 33 Chinese firms and institutions, including the Shanghai-listed software giant , were added to an economic blacklist for activities that threaten American national security or foreign policy interests.
Last month President Donald Trump suggested he is considering going further.
“There are many things we could do,” he told Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business host. “"
Economists now talk about “decoupling” the Chinese and U.S. economies, severing supply chains and business relationships that account for trillions of dollars in trade, because of the political tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“Some decoupling in the high-tech area seems inevitable and already in process,” said Doug Barry, the spokesman for communications and publications at the US-China Business Council.
Driven by the U.S. campaign to restrict China’s technology giants because of threats to U.S. national security, experts say the U.S.-China decoupling could widen to include desktop computers as well.
"To keep China from using Windows would be devastating to China," Dr. Feng Chongyi, associate professor in China Studies at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an email to VOA. "I am afraid this is a logical step when the Cold War II escalates to a higher level."
Like the rest of the world, China is heavily dependent on American technology companies that design microchips and the most popular computer operating systems.
According to a market report released last July by a Chinese research firm, Microsoft enjoys a dominant position in desktop and server operating systems, with nearly 90% of the market share in China.
"Domestic desktop and mobile operating systems are still in their infancy, accounting for less than 1% of the domestic market share," said the report by Co., Ltd.
To China, this represents a staggering national security problem.
The need for a homegrown operating system took on new urgency inside China in 2013 after Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked evidence showing secret U.S. surveillance programs, revealed he had avoided using commercial operating systems like Windows to hide his communications from the National Security Agency (NSA). then also quoted Snowden as saying the NSA had monitored the communications of top Chinese leaders. In China, his remarks led officials to suspect the NSA might be inserting backdoors into U.S.-made software.
The concern from China led Microsoft to open a facility in Beijing to allow officials to review the operating system source code to ensure there are no hidden backdoors. In 2017 Microsoft announced that the company would build a “Windows 10 China Government Edition” for Chinese government agencies to use. That led Microsoft to partner with a Chinese state-owned company to sell a custom-tailored “Windows 10 CMIT” to the Chinese government.
However, experts say on a practical level Chinese engineers have never been able to fully examine the Microsoft code and guarantee security because of the products’ complexity.
"The security risks and supply risks [of using Microsoft software] have never been resolved," an analyst named Yuanzhan wrote last month on Baijiahao, a platform for freelance writers, bloggers, and journalists powered by China's search giant, Baidu.
Today, it’s unclear how Beijing views the security of these products. In May 2015, the central government issued a notice requiring all essential government agencies to stop purchasing Microsoft Windows.