According to Bloomberg, China intends to stop the use of computers and operating systems of foreign companies in state institutions and state enterprises within two years. It is expected that the initiative will require the replacement of at least 50 million foreign-brand computers, which are ordered to be replaced with equipment from Chinese manufacturers.

According to preliminary data, the prescription will not apply to components that are difficult to replace, such as processors. Despite the development of China’s own chips , most Chinese manufacturers continue to use Intel and AMD processors in PCs. Microsoft software is recommended to be replaced with Linux-based solutions developed by Chinese manufacturers.

If you’ve been closely following Linux news, you may have heard about Germany dumping Windows in favor of Linux on over 25,000 PCs last year. At that point, the community predicted that a lot of other countries might ditch Windows for Linux. The prediction was pretty much on point as China has recently announced that it’ll be ditching Windows for Linux on over 50 million PCs!

While the end goal of both the countries is the same, their reasoning for doing the same differs. Germany did it so that the government could save on licensing costs and promote open-source. China’s doing it to “remove foreign operating systems” so that they could maintain the OS in the country.

While this is a big win for Linux and open-source software, it’s bad news for laptop/PC manufacturers like Dell, HP, etc., and software companies like Adobe and Microsoft, except Lenovo and Kingsoft. While manufacturers will be driven into the corner for being “foreign” companies, homegrown companies like Lenovo, Huawei, and Kingsoft might see rapid market growth in the forthcoming years.

In a bid to support local PC makers and software developers and reduce the impact of any potential future sanctions from western governments, China's government this week reiterated its order to replace foreign-branded PCs and programs used by government agencies and state-backed companies with local technology within two years.

While replacing a Dell running Windows with a Lenovo running Linux sounds tempting for Chinese companies, it looks like the country has been failing to do so up to this point, but the renewed initiative appears to have more teeth.

It has happened in other regions before and it's happening again in China: the government has ordered the dumping of Windows in favor of Linux, among other things. This time, though, the reasoning is a bit different. According to Bloomberg, Beijing has ordered government offices and state-backed firms to replace foreign-branded PCs and their associated operating systems with alternatives that can be domestically maintained.

As such, China is set to replace almost 50 million PCs in central government agencies alone. It is important to note that this process will obviously not be completed in one fell swoop but is intended to be carried out in a staggered manner over a period of two years, according to unnamed sources familiar with the matter.