The Chinese apparantly have not got over the perceived slights that they received at the hands of Microsoft Corp, and although Bill Gates has been energetically fence-mending, Peking is taking the opportunity of doing a bit of party-pooping ahead of the Windows95 launch and the Ministry of Electronics Industry has endorsed OS/2 Warp for use in China.Yang Tianxing, computer department chief at the Ministry of Electronics Industry, said the unprecedented endorsement of the Chinese version of Warp aimed to assure Chinese users a choice, the official Xinhua news agency said. The endorsement was part of a statement of direction signed by Chinese and IBM officials, Xinhua said. According to the statement, the ministry is to endorse OS/2 Warp as a preferred product and recommend it to Chinese users, so as to provide them with alternatives, the news agency said. A Chinese version of Windows95 is planned for launch before the end of 1995. Microsoft China manager Duh Jia-bin told Reuter such a government endorsement could give a helpful nudge to Chinese Warp but he voiced doubts about its applications. Just because the Ministry endorses it doesn’t mean that there are suddenly lots of new applications, Duh said: end users still need ap plications. IBM China believes that it will be bigger than IBM Europe within 10 years (CI No 2,731), a statement some are seeing as a thinly-disguised forecast that European sales will plunge precipitously. Xinhua said an official committee on Chinese computing would establish teams to look at OS/2 and IBM’s Lotus Notes, and would invite IBM and Lotus to become correspondent members. The committee will recommend character fonts, character style and input methods that are consistent with Chinese standards to expedite standardisation of OS/2 Warp and Lotus Notes, it said.
