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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: 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.