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from the year-of-the-linux-desktop-in-China-by-2023 dept.
The Guardian is reporting that the tech war just got hot.
China will be replacing all hardware and software with Chinese equivalents. This is the latest escalation in the US-China tech trade war in response to the US ban on Huawei equipment.
China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years, the Financial Times reports.
The government directive is likely to be a blow to US multinational companies like HP, Dell and Microsoft and mirrors attempts by Washington to limit the use of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the countries turns into a tech cold war.
The Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Chinese Chinese[sic] telecommunications company Huawei earlier this year and in May, Google, Intel and Qualcomm announced they would freeze cooperation with Huawei.
By excluding China from western know-how, the Trump administration has made it clear that the real battle is about which of the two economic superpowers has the technological edge for the next two decades.
China already leads in patents
China's 2016 patent application total is greater than the combined total of patent applications filed in 2016 in the United States (605,571), Japan (318,381), South Korea (208,830) and Europe (159,358). These five jurisdictions accounted for 84 percent of all patent applications filed during 2016.
China has been preparing for an all-out IT war.
In May, Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times newspaper in China, said the withdrawal of sharing by US tech companies with Huawei would not be fatal for the company because the Chinese firm has been planning for this conflict "for years" and would prompt the company to develop its own microchip industry to rival America's.
"Cutting off technical services to Huawei will be a real turning point in China's overall research and development and use of domestic chips," he said in a social media post. "Chinese people will no longer have any illusions about the steady use of US technology."
US trade policy may have been meant to pressure China, but that move looks to have just forced an acceleration of the loss of software and hardware orders from American suppliers to China.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @03:51PM
If anyone is wondering if they have the technical means to do it the answer is: yes, at least for hardware.
For x86 VIA has presented an 8-core modern CPU with quad-channel DDR4-3200 RAM and 44-lane PCIe 3.0. That should be sufficient for any current non-server use.
On server side they still have x86 HyGon Dhyana based on AMD Zen and a full in-house ARM server architecture with all the trimmings (storage, network and fabric controllers) with HiSilicon Kunpeng. The last available public information is Kunpeng 920 maxing out with 64-core ARMv8.2 octa-channel DDR4-2933 with 40-lane PCIe 4.0. The next generation 930 should be hitting this or next year as well.
As for software side I'm pretty sure they bullied Microsoft into sharing Windows & Office sources a long time ago.