Chinese government bans Windows 8 due to Microsoft’s retirement of Windows XP

Microsoft has taken heat every time it tried to end support for Windows XP, but finally almost 13 years after it was released, Microsoft has flipped the switch and stopped delivering system updates to XP users. Well, mostly. There have been some angry rumblings, but consumers seem to be coping, and large customers like business and governments can buy extended support licenses. So everything is fine? Not from the perspective of the Chinese government, which apparently has trust issues after the end of XP support. New rules announced last week ban the use of Windows 8 on government PCs.
Microsoft has a complicated history with Windows in China. PC sales are roughly the same as the US, but more than a third are still running XP. There are no official numbers on government IT platforms, but it’s safe to say XP’s share is even higher there. What is remarkable about the Chinese software market is the sheer number of pirated Windows installs. In spite of all those PC sales, Microsoft only sees about 5% of the revenue in China that it does in the US.

It’s no secret that piracy is rampant in the Chinese consumer electronics market, and that’s probably one of the main reasons XP is still so widely used. Newer versions of Windows introduced tougher anti-piracy measures that require more fiddling to bypass, and are easier to trip in the future. The Chinese government has suggested in the past that Microsoft should lower the price of Windows instead of combating piracy.
The block on Windows 8 was enacted as part of a notice on energy-saving procedures posted on the Central Government Procurement Center website. It was certainly an odd way to announce the ban of a major operating system. The official Xinhua news agency elaborated on the ban, saying it was being put in place to ensure future security after Microsoft ended support for Windows XP… after 13 years. Apparently the Chinese government doesn’t want to be in a similar situation after buying another “foreign OS.” That raises the question, of course, what OS is China going to use on government computers?

China’s Kylin OS. It was originally based on FreeBSD, but now it’s derived from Ubuntu

The Chinese propaganda machine might simply be trying to spin the end of XP support as some failing of the foreign software market in an effort to jumpstart a local alternative. There are a few Chinese Linux distros like StartOS and Kylin, but usage of these operating systems is still low. It’s more likely the Chinese government is working on its own version of desktop Linux to go along with the new Linux-based mobile OS known as China Operating System (COS).
Microsoft is no doubt unhappy to hear about the ban on Windows 8 in the Chinese government, as if that platform needed any more bad press. With most Windows machines in China running pirated versions of the OS, it’s not like Microsoft is about to see profits fall off a cliff. Still, having the Chinese government actively discourage the use of Windows could make it hard for Microsoft to gain a foothold with the growing Chinese middle class who might have the means to pay for software.