Tech sovereignty for India under spotlight as Chinese govt ditches Windows

New Delhi, Aug 28 (AHN) China has instructed some state‑linked entities to uninstall a customised edition of Windows 10 used by government agencies, prompting debates on India's tech sovereignty and moves that prioritise long term security over short term discomfort.

The move from the Chinese government reflects a deliberate strategy to reduce dependence on foreign technology and sequence replacements from the state downwards, according to an opinion piece on India Narrative.

"Government first, enterprise next, consumer rarely if ever. Beijing is recompiling its own kernel, one privilege level at a time," the report said.

The publication said that the Chinese directive on August 18 asked state-linked entities to uninstall the customised edition of the application, came well before the February 2027 retirement Microsoft had itself already scheduled.

"What got retired, ahead of schedule and without any publicly named vulnerability, was the version the government itself had been running its innermost administrative machinery on. Beijing did not write that code, and evidently no longer trusted itself to have fully audited it," the report said.

The publication said that the Chinese directive on August 18 asked state-linked entities to uninstall the customised edition of the application, came well before the February 2027 retirement Microsoft had itself already scheduled.

"What got retired, ahead of schedule and without any publicly named vulnerability, was the version the government itself had been running its innermost administrative machinery on. Beijing did not write that code, and evidently no longer trusted itself to have fully audited it," the report said.

The ordinary consumer versions of Windows continue to remain widely used in China which is part of a pattern China follows.

Well before Google was blocked in China, domestically created applications such as Baidu, Alipay, WeChat Pay and Alibaba Cloud filled that gap organically, after which a formal restriction was announced.

The publication lauded digital infrastructure in India such as the Unified Payments Interface and Aadhaar which have become global references but critical dependencies remain in several areas.

India’s semiconductor efforts, including Tata’s Dholera fab, are progressing but its 28-nanometre node, built for automotive chips, is far from the technological frontier.

The report noted that India has no equivalent to the Ascend programme as Nvidia’s chips reach Indian buyers without the licensing friction China faces but that also deepens a dependency.

—AHN

aar/pk