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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, Interesting) by Rich on Monday December 09 2019, @04:15PM (10 children)
I wanted to submit this, but saw it was already on the shortlist.
The Chinese can succeed at this. Over a decade ago, I met a Chinese student who studied automotive technology and business here in Germany. 6 foot Han guy. Definitely made the impression that the party would approve of him. He had absorbed every bit of knowledge, which I thought is what you can expect after you make the kids learn their 6000 characters in "frontal" education (and that wouldn't work any other way, no consideration for special snowflakes). He did not appear very creative or entrepreneurial to me, though.
Last year, I ordered some PCBs with assembly in Shenzhen. These guys go into business like into a sports competition they want to win, and learn it by doing. And around that, cottage industries spring up with creative minds. I don't doubt that by mixing this attitude with the strong MINT education, they easily have the manpower to do whatever they want with software. They could assign hinterland universities with creating Office or Adobe suite equivalents and they'd get them within the desired timeframes.
The only thing that might stop them would be some 70+ concrete-headed old-school communist as lead of the undertaking, or internal party quarrels. Also, they have no taste (in our eyes anyway), and whatever we get is always a bit of hit & miss.
Meanwhile, in the West, politicians fed from the teats of the big monopolies do everything to keep their revenues flowing. Particularly for Germany, it would have been advantageous to mandate FLOSS. The German mentality is probably the one with the strongest urge to contribute to such projects, as can be witnessed by the contributor lists. It would have been a gamble, but one that over time, by pure statistics, would have brought the lead in software technologies. Had that happened, the West would have had at least something understandable within the shared cultural realm (e.g. roughly every German speaks English, and you would've gotten all the documentation). Instead, the German politicians mumble something about a "united Europe", which translates to "paying money to French cliques".
With TTIP they would've had eternally outlawed the possibility of going FLOSS. ("How about software?" - "Oh, you're worried about the chlorinated chickens?" - "I was more worrying about the lines that mandate to consider closed monopoly software and forbid requiring open source in govt. purchases." - "Well, if we negotiate hard, maybe we can do something about the chlorinated chickens, possibly something with labeling them, only if everyone agrees, of course").
Now the Chinese present the bill. The interesting stuff will not have English documentation. You already see that with electronic component datasheets, where the really inexpensive stuff is Chinese-only. As an individual, you might be able to get something through LCSC and an online translator of your choice, but as business of significant size, you're out. And have lost the ability to compete, for good.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @04:41PM (3 children)
On your note about what might stop them, the Chinese political system is very different in two big ways:
1) One of the main things they are now looking for in party members is now charisma, social, or other soft skills - but raw engineering and technical ability and education.
2) There are age caps. Politburo (the most powerful political body in the country) face mandatory retirement at 68 years old, and new members must also abide the age cap - though that rule does not apply to the president.
The thing I find most disconcerting about this all is that they make no secret of this whatsoever and the rest of the world can see what they're doing. I think they're going to continue to pull ahead of the world because of these sort of changes. They're building a mostly unified technocracy with a political base increasingly made up of engineers and scientists, while we have an increasingly divided democracy led by charismatic idiots and demagogues primarily with law degrees. Oh and of course they have literally well over a billion more people than us.
We seriously need to reboot our political system, but the powers that be have done a hell of a great job of making sure that never happens by causing mass divisions within society. People hating each other tends to preclude them working together.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 09 2019, @05:37PM (1 child)
Was one of these "now"s supposed to be a "not"? I'm not following why there's a "but" in this sentence.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @05:40PM
Yip, second one. Was hoping context would clarify. Let me add some random sentence here so I can post this message. Hrm. Still not going. Can I post now?
How weird, have I hit some sort of a word filter with some weird combination here?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Monday December 09 2019, @11:34PM
Let me paraphrase this. Chinese system is by nature Confucian. One could do some reading about it, but the basics are simple. A good child takes a test and gets to a good school. A good bureaucrat takes a test and gets a promotion.
Yes, there are violations and corruption and whatever, but the system makes the simple rule I described the mail goal. The smartest goes up.
Everybody knows it and studies as hard as possible.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 09 2019, @06:58PM (3 children)
In the late '80s I got drunk with a bunch of Chinese Uni students - they were both humble and extremely nationalistically prideful at the same time "we are not the best today, but one day soon we will be!"
They have the population numbers, they have the work ethic, everybody on the planet has access to higher education now, they have the physical resources - they might screw it up socially (over-exploiting the workers), environmentally (obvious), and if they actually start a hot nuclear war they're going down, but... if they make it another 50 years without a serious meltdown, I do believe that China will be grinding the West into a fine powder - making the US then look like the UK looks today.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @10:52PM
making the US then look like the UK looks today.
*sigh* Everybody has it so backwards. The US is Pinky. The UK is the Brain!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by legont on Monday December 09 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)
Agree, but it is 10 years, not 50; 20 the most.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:04AM
In 10 years we'll know it's inevitable, but it will take another 40 before we're learning Mandarin so we can get jobs as wait staff in any good restaurant in major US cities.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @10:04PM (1 child)
Those are the four largest groups of contributors I have seen, in order. Germans/Russians have been at the forefront since the 80s, formerly in cracking/scene/niche software development, but more and more in open source in the years since. America had a head start in open source in the early days, mostly due to more contribution favorable licensing, but it has been slowly decreasing as fewer people have the disposable income for side projects (the ones left who do are higher functioning individuals, some simply driven, and others with substance abuse problems, but amazing minds.) In the meantime, lots of chinese have graduated and joined in on contributing to open source since certain areas have loosened restrictions on the great firewall, or sent more of their people abroad. Where it used to be primarily hk/tw residents contributing to code, now it's as often mainlanders, many of whole have gone on to become open source corporate employees.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rich on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:26AM
Don't forget the Scandinavians, who, by the number of contributors per inhabitant, are huge as well. (A honourable mention for "rest of the world" goes to Brazil, at least in my subjective perception.)
As for the Chinese, I think some of the "makers" from the Shenzhen area might grasp the importance of a software community (while for the major part they just trample over the GPL, see the M-Tester, for example). The others merely understand that they can't sell their stuff to Westerners if they don't (at least look like they) play ball, and maybe an understanding that software quality and conformity is part of the overall value they want to get paid for. Have a look at how the Allwinner/Sunxi stuff developed over time.