Microsoft Flops in China – the Chinese Pirate Everything

Microsoft Flops in China – the Chinese Pirate Everything

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003

The official price of a Chinese-language version of Microsoft’s Windows XP is $245, which according to Forbes is about four months' salary for the average Chinese worker. But not to worry, that worker can pick up a bootlegged copy for a mere $5.50 U.S.

Illegal copies of the program are recorded on CDs, and they’re readily available in China, where piracy of pricey software is par for the course. The Chinese pirate everything they can get their hands on, Forbes reports.

Shockingly, Forbes reveals that fully 90 percent of the application software used by the Chinese comes from illegal copies.

Like most U.S. companies, Microsoft is addicted to the dream of tapping that huge Chinese market, but they’ve yet to figure out how to cope with piracy, among other less than delightful Chinese practices and restrictions. All this is against laws passed in order to enable Beijing to gain entrance into the World Trade Organization, but once in, and now enjoying a $30.4 billion trade surplus with the U.S., the laws are simply not enforced.

Microsoft and fellow piracy victim Cisco Systems have fought back with lawsuits. The results have not been promising – according to Forbes, Microsoft is portrayed as a big bad bully. Moreover, whenever Beijing decides they’re being picked on, they add a little blackmail to the piracy mix – according to Forbes they have “thrown more of [their] weight behind Linux, the feebie operating system that poses a global threat to Windows.”

But like a whipped cur that keeps coming back for more abuse in the hope that some tasty dog biscuits might be forthcoming, mighty Microsoft stands with hat in hand, still dreaming of that gigantic 1.3 billion people hungering-for-computers market and willing to do just about anything to appease the lords of Beijing.

Consider:

In June of 2002, Gates’ company promised to cough up a cool $750 million over three years for technology training and to buy hardware from Chinese factories and invest in joint ventures with Chinese businesses.

Thirty Microsoft software engineers have been sent to lecture on software programming in Chinese schools.

Microsoft Entered into a $25 million three year partnership with Beijing’s education ministry to promote basic research at Chinese universities.

There are other piracy victims, Forbes reports. Thomas Lee Boam, a commercial attaché at the U.S Embassy in Beijing told Forbes “It is everything: pharmaceuticals, Zippo lighters, circuit boards, you name it. If it can be reverse engineered, it will be.”

Forbes says that even cars are copied. “You can get a fake Volkswagen made in China,” the magazine reported.

Pirated clothing, videos, CDs, all are readily available.

“The International Intellectual Property Alliance estimates that millions of pirated DVDs worth $160 million, and $47 million worth of fake CDs and cassettes were sold in China in 2001,” Forbes said.

There really is a big market over there – the problem is the market’s symbol is the skull and crossbones, and it’s run by a guy named Bluebeard.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Microsoft

China/Taiwan

Editor's note:
Chinese Military Manual Calls for "Unrestricted" War Against America