The Chinese government is urgently urging domestic companies to develop their own operating systems in order to reduce dependence on American technology from Apple and Microsoft.
In recent years, Mac computer sales in China have surged. The popularity of models using Apple's own chips has contributed significantly to this growth.
Faced with this situation, the Chinese government is urgently urging domestic companies to develop their own operating systems in order to reduce dependence on American technology from Apple and Microsoft.
Like any other country in the world, personal computers in China mostly run Windows or macOS . In recent years, Apple has steadily increased its market share and now holds around 15%, while Windows accounts for the remaining 85%. Other operating systems like Linux make up only a negligible fraction.
For many years, the Chinese government expressed dissatisfaction with its dependence on American technology and tasked the National University of Defense Technology of the Chinese military with developing a "homegrown" operating system. This operating system was launched in 2001 under the name Kylin.
Although Kylin has been used in military and government computer systems, it has not yet been widely adopted.
According to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese government is now making greater efforts to bring Kylin into mainstream use. An open-source version called openKylin will be released to serve this goal. Early versions of Kylin were based on FreeBSD, while openKylin is based on Linux.
The South China Morning Post reported the following:
China has created an open platform to accelerate the development of its domestic computer operating system. This is its latest effort to eliminate dependence on foreign systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS.
Last week, Kylinsoft, a subsidiary of China State Electronics Corporation, partnered with 10 Chinese entities, including the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, to establish an open-source community.
Named "openKylin," it allows programmers to publish and share computer code related to the Kylin operating system.
China's efforts come amid rising US-China tensions. China is now trying to encourage local companies to acquire critical technologies ranging from semiconductors to software.
Conversely, American companies are also trying to find ways to reduce their reliance on production lines in China. Apple itself is making daily efforts to diversify its manufacturing base, but the pace is still very slow.