The Chinese government has decided to not purchase computers loaded with Windows 8. Some have argued that this is a negotiating tactic or, as many Chinese netizens have pointed out, a pragmatic move based upon the expense of training millions of government workers to use the OS. However, as I wrote on Quora, I see this as a move accellerating adoption of an ‘indigenously developed’ operating system: an operating system created in China, by Chinese software engineers, specifically for use in China.
This desire for an indigenous OS is not new. The original Kylin operating system, originally a FreeBSD ripoff but now a Ubuntu branch discussed in more detail below, began development in 2001. Reports in the media of a recent speech in which one Chinese academic stated that “China will kick its dependency on foreign mobile OSes in the next three to five years” and a Xinhua article about Chinese OS both reenforce the fact that pressing for adoption of an indigenous OS is more than a trend or knee-jerk reaction to Snowden. The range of options being developed, and the reasons why they are being considered, are worthy of consideration.
Why China Cares About Operating Systems
Security
The Snowden leaks have given Chinese policy makers internationally-accepted evidence for the necessity of maintaining control over IT security (operating systems, networking, cloud). The WSJ reported on a CCTV broadcast in which
It quoted people it identified as experts who said that an operating system’s maker can obtain user data including phone numbers and bank-account information. “Whoever controls the operating system can control all the data on the computers using it,” it said.
China has responded to the news by working to drop products by foreign technology companies in favor of those made by domestic companies. As Want China Times writes:
A “get rid of IOE” wave is currently sweeping across China’s financial sector, with IOE being an acronym for traditional American technology and data storage companies IBM, Oracle and EMC.
This ‘wave’ is not restricted to network hardware. Foreign software and cloud services have also been added to the Party’s Koko-like little list.
Developing and successfully promoting the adoption of an indigenous OS would allow China to be sure there are no malicious backdoors or accidental opportunities (like automatic cloud backup; a feature that a software developer could remove for the China market) for Chinese data to be sent to foreign servers, where it ostensibly would be easy prey for the NSA.
Equally important, though, is the potential that an indigenous OS has for facilitating government control over Chinese netizens’ activities.
Control
The first aspect of control, control over sensitive data and network security, has been touched upon above. However, a more insidious form of control is control of netizens’ internet use. The CPC’s fear of its citizens, and its fear of discourse on the internet, have led to its current policy of seeking strict control over the internet.
While the Chinese government tried to control information so to control the narrative, “foreign technology” facilitated the spread of information. From the standpoint of ‘stability maintenance’, one can see why the CPC would see smart phone apps as a technology to be controlled. An illustrative (if common) example is the effect that the US Embassy’s air pollution monitor’s twitter feed had on raising awareness of air pollution in China. While the twitter feed was blocked along with the rest of twitter, the information was packaged into apps distributed through Google Play and the App Store, and urbanites laughed off officials’ claims that Beijing’s shroud of pollution was, in fact, “fog”.
Other areas of internet use that the Party has shown the desire to control include filtering software installed on every system, OS-based support of real-name regulations for online discourse, and raising the barrier for use of VPNs.
A previous attempt to force people to buy computers with filtering software, the Green Dam Youth Escort software, failed in part because users had the choice to wipe the Windows install with Green Dam and do a clean install. (There were a number of other scandals related to the software, including stolen code and grave security concerns.)
By having a wide user base for its own operating system(s), the government can not only be more responsible for (and have more of a hand in) computer security, but also ensure that future initiatives to control (and, possibly, monitor) internet activity will be much more likely to succeed. If China are able to make it more difficult for people to get (or less common for people to run) Windows, and all indigenous operating system(s) include a Green Dam equivalent, it will be much easier for the government to control and/or monitor what people are doing online.
The battle for mobile
China has publicly stated its desire to control the operating systems (and ecosystems) on mobile devices in China. The two current frontrunner OS, iOS and Android, both pose similar problems of control for the government: both are American companies that largely operate outside Party control and use foreign servers to store data, though Apple has shown a willingness to accede to CPC demands in order to protect its business interests in China.
Android is, of course, a Google product, and Google and Chinese government have been at loggerheads since Google withdrew from China in 2010 after Chinese government agents hacked into Gmail (allegedly through backdoors designed for the NSA). China’s continued active filtering and blocking of all Google services, not just search, makes them at best unreliable in China.
While Android has continued to be used by Chinese tech companies to develop their own mobile OS, few rely upon (or even offer) Google services. Most Android devices for the China market do not include the Google Play Store. Baidu, continuing in its quest to do everything Google does, but a little bit worse, created Baidu Yi, a fork of Android. Currently, Baidu offers the Baidu Yun OS, an Android-based OS that looks quite a bit like Xiaomi’s MIUI OS (which is quite nice). Alibaba’s Ali Yun is also originally Android-based, and, at one point, came with an app store that distributed pirated Android apps; Ali Yun has since been expanded to include cloud computing (hence its name) and SAAS.
Apple
Apple have have shown a willingness to play ball with Chinese leadership, weathering a CCTV-led orchestrated smear campaign against it, and Apple products remain popular in China. However, the CPC has shown some disquiet with Apple, with rumors emerging last year that cadres have been told not to use Apple products. Apple’s system is controlled by Apple, and though it has shown willingness to remove apps from the China App Store at the requests of the Chinese government ((Think of how scandalous this would have seemed just a few years ago.)), it remain in control of its ecosystem and can do things like removing anti-Japanese games by Chinese developers.
China’s ‘Indigenous’ Mobile & Desktop Operating Systems
China has shown interest in developing desktop and mobile operating systems to replace the current, foreign, options. Two projects have received attention: China Operating System and Ubuntu Kylin.
China Operating System (COS): An indigenous mobile OS
Around the same time news broke of the Windows 8 ban, China Operating System (COS) was announced. COS, while officially a project by Liantong Network Communications Technology, is apparently also a major project for phone maker HTC. COS said to be a Linux-based, closed-source operating system. This has led many to wonder if the developers have taken a page from their predecessors’ playbook and have used stolen code.
In many ways, COS seems to embody much of what does not and never has worked about the Party’s way of doing things: rejecting everything from outside (Android, iOS, the idea of open source software), in favor of rigid control. Claims that foreign operating systems have not made the effort to provide Chinese users with the features they need doubtlessly ring hollow to the vast majority of Chinese people who have no problem with Android or iOS. These bombastic claims call into question the developers’ statement that the OS would ship with compatibility with over 100,000 applications. It remains to be seen if this is true, or if the cross-platform compatibility is possible only by infringing upon others’ IP.
Ubuntu Kylin: China’s desktop (and mobile) future?
The most important step towards China’s goal of a ubiquitous indigenous OS is the development of Ubuntu Kylin, which takes the name of a previous, unsuccessful project and uses it on a Ubuntu distro for China.
So far, Ubuntu Kylin has been a success. It has had over three million downloads and has signed an OEM agreement to be sold preloaded on HP PCs in China.
More security, more compatibility, fewer IP headaches
Ubuntu would see to answer many of the criticisms voiced about Windows 8 (and other foreign technologies). First, it gives devs an open source-based OS that can be shaped to fit China’s needs. Ubuntu is open source, meaning engineers at the NUDT can use it to make an OS that is China-friendly and that meets the various security goals of the Party. Additionally, by making Kylin an official version of Ubuntu, they avoid the embarrassment of again having been found to have ripped off intellectual property and attempting to pass it off as their own.
Ubuntu, as OSS, has a large number of applications ready to run on it, meaning that the Wall Stree Journal is incorrect when it writes:
For example, if China were to switch to a homegrown operating system, it would have a hard time replacing Microsoft’s Office suite of software
This is a familiar criticism of OSS, and one that is simply not true.
A desktop and mobile OS
An interesting benefit of devloping with Ubuntu is the Canonical’s plans for Ubuntu’s mobile future. The Ubuntu Edge was a fantastic PR stunt to acquire brainspace for Ubuntu’s mobile plans. Stunt aside, Canonic’s plans for an OS that allows you to make your phone or tablet your main computer. If Ubuntu Kylin were to take off in China, in a few years time it could be running on domestic computers, tablets, and phones.
A domestic cloud
Of course, storage becomes a consideration when you use a phone or tablet as a computer. Since Ubuntu discontinued its own cloud service, there are a number of Chinese cloud services, like Alibaba’s 阿里云 or Baidu’s 百度云 that could be tied in to the OS. By doing so, developers could negate worries about officials accidentally syncing data to overseas servers.
Ubuntu offers a perfect opportunity for China. It would allow them to develop an OS that can be easily controlled, is secure, and is part of an existing and mature development ecosystem with a huge number of mature, free applications.
China’s Strategy: See What Sticks
Chinese policy makers are finally applying lessons learned from the nation’s economic boom: decentralize and see what works. The first iteration of Kylin and Green Dam were international embarrassments because their development was centralized and isolated. Software engineers were given unreasonable tasks that they were expected to complete in isolation. The move towards open source shows a mature pragmatism.
In the end, this story is interesting because it raises one of the perennial questions about modern China: Can the state do it all on its own, or will it appropriate and adapt foreign technologies like Ubuntu and call them its own?
To me, the latter seems more likely. Hello, Ubuntu Kylin.
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