Article from MSNBC (English)

"In addition to commercial reasons for protecting local software, there are security issues. China is placing official support behind the Red Flag Linux operating system, which they trust because the open-source code allows officials to see that there are no data spyholes installed by foreign powers."

Same article from Silicon.com (English)

Chinese government announcements for procurement (Babelfish English)

Expect more announcements from China favoring Linux. As we have said in previous articles, the move from Windows to Linux is being very carefully planned and orchestrated in China, as demanded by cultural norms there. The sheer numbers of computers and people involved make this announcement very significant, especially as the Chinese market is already the fastest growing one for Linux. It is probably difficult for Microsoft to understand what's really going on in this market; although they have made concessions to opening their source code up, "Intellectual Property" is a foreign concept to Chinese thinking, so the move to Free Software in China is something that in fact can't be stopped.

Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica