In January, the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences had announced the development of a government-backed operating system named China Operating System (COS). The brutal directness of the name is now revealed to be matched by blitzkrieg speed of development?Xinhua reports that the OS could be ready for desktops by October and replace American systems used in China within two years. Mobile and tablet versions are planned within five years. However, this is not as amazing as it may seem. Like Android, COS is based on the Linux kernel. The developmental challenge is limited to stripping out or adding modules, drivers and functionalities to the kernel. Thereafter, the huge Linux application ecosystem is available for use. Mobile development would take longer because a kernel-specific mobile ecosystem would have to be built.

But the reports that Beijing is investing in this system in order to compete with Microsoft and Apple are almost certainly incorrect. The immediate concern is security. China has been leery of US products ever since Edward Snowden disclosed that American hardware made for export was sometimes ?backdoored? or ?trapdoored? to give clandestine access to foreign networks. Besides, China has had to stare down foreign service providers like Google to enforce its pervasive system of censorship by proxy, the Golden Shield Project. The government?s interests concerning security and surveillance would be much easier to serve if it had complete control over the operating system used by servers, clients, phones and other connected devices.

For at least two decades, China has been deeply invested in digital ?swadeshi?. Back in the 1990s, when the internet was dominated by US English, it was a pioneer in the development of indigenous non-Roman fonts; this helped China to expand its user base much more rapidly than other non-Western nations. Tamil and Arabic went online soon after, laying the foundations of the multilingual, multicultural web we take for granted today. China had favoured free and open source software, believing it was the only way to close the gap in the digital arms race with the US. Bill Gates hurried to Beijing to sell Microsoft wares. He developed a personal commitment to China which began with marketing and graduated to philanthropy, but this April, it didn?t prevent the

Central Government Procurement Centre from banning the purchase of Windows 8 for government use. China needs a modern OS to replace Windows. Its defence labs have been seeking alternatives since 2005, when they created the Kylin OS from FreeBSD. But now, the government has placed its faith in the Linux-based COS, which will serve as a free but closed source operating system. One that Beijing can tap and control, and foreign governments can?t.