China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
THIS post or article is made to be concise. It does not dive deep into the issues but strives to give somewhat of an overview, an alta vista.
The topic was brought up and discussed a lot in our IRC network (as these things rapidly develop and escalate). It is increasingly relevant and it has been debated a lot in the media so far this week, mostly in light of campaigns of espionage (we started seeing reports on this around Sunday or Monday, with focus on New Zealand, the UK, some of Eastern Europe, and the US).
As a recap or an outline (not chronological in order), in only 10 points:
- China is alleged to be targeting politicians (in the "cyber" sense/way; the media talks of "cyberattacks") in several FIVE-EYES nations (not six as we saw nothing substantial about Japan)
- There are still Western bans on the likes of Huawei and considerable pressure on countries that don't play along with those bans
- China is already targeted for its use of RISC-V
- We see worrying smear pieces painting "open source" as a problem because China adopts it (and/or why we need to stop/prevent this); we saw one this week and would rather not link to it again
- China effectively bans x86 (AMD and Intel) on government/'public' sector machines, which means Windows binaries have no advantage anymore
- There are more trade-related sanctions associated with imports and exports, dividing the world of "tech" and thus curtailing the monoculture Intel and Microsoft (a.k.a. Wintel) have long enjoyed and still love so much. China has the most Internet-connected computer users in the world.
- China is developing alternatives to Android, GitHub etc. because it cannot rely on overseas companies
- Google does not operate in almost all of China (depending on how Beijing defines "China"). That's partly because of Google co-founder Mr. Brin, who grew up in Moscow and wishes not to abet oppressive regimes.
- China is showing more involvement in Linux development (thorny issue for the Linux Foundation), oftentimes because it wishes to improve hardware support for Chinese products
- China has gained more visibility in GNU; they openly support Richard Stallman and oppose the vicious vitriolic attacks on him from the 'cancer culture' (looking to cancel a person until the person has cancer and then it "looks bad" to persist with the smears; it's time to move to a deputy like Eben Moglen; we've seen much of the same in Wikileaks/Assange). People who live in an autocratic society have a better understanding of this "playbook", so they've been inoculated against lynch mobs, albeit they're been discouraged from resisting that domestically. They're conditioned to stay quiet where the regime "disappears" or assassinates dissenters.
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues; Free software is anyone to run as one wishes and to take away this freedom would mean to undermine Software Freedom for everyone. We recently wrote about this in relation to Russia. █