The Financial Times reported (December 9) that an internal Party directive issued earlier this year ordered all Party-State institutions to remove all foreign computer equipment and software in the next three years. Analysts at China Securities estimated that 20m-30m pieces of hardware will need to be weeded out. Substitutions would take place at a pace of 30 per cent in 2020, 50 per cent in 2021, and 20 per cent the year after, earning the policy the nickname ‘3-5-2.’” Analysts said “It will be difficult to replace software with domestic alternatives, since most software vendors develop products for popular US-made operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s macOS. China’s homemade operating systems, such as Kylin OS, have a much smaller ecosystem of developers producing compatible software. Defining ‘domestically made’ is also challenging. Even though Lenovo is a Chinese-owned company that assembles many products in China, its computer processor chips are made by Intel and its hard drives by Samsung.”
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