They hailed the move as a great opportunity for software producers who can provide China with the latest technology to ensure the smooth running of state organs.

In a campaign called the "patent movement," government departments will set the lead for the whole of society to use copyrighted, patented software products, said Yu Cisheng, director of the Science and Technology Commission of the Beijing municipal government.

The city is spearheading the move and has purchased software products worth more than 15 million yuan (US$1.8 million).

Many other provincial governments are following suit to ensure all software used by the government is copyrighted and patented.

Guangdong Provincial Government is now deciding whether to authorize the purchase of new software. The result is expected to be announced before Spring Festival on February 12.

Domestic software products were the biggest winners in Beijing's decision to purchase new software. US-based top software vendor Microsoft lost out in the bidding.

"We mainly considered function, security and price," said Yu.

Software products purchased as part of the deal were WPS word processing software from Kingsoft, a Zhuhai-based company, and Red Flag Linux, a product based on Linux software.

This marked a major breakthrough for Linux products in the government as Linux has long been regarded as being on the fringes of the market.

"Security and price were, again, the major reasons for us choosing Linux," Yu said.

Compared with Windows software developed by Microsoft, which does not open codes and has been criticized for major technical flaws, Linux has high security, as all the codes are open and can be freely downloaded from the Internet, Yu said.

And Linux products are much cheaper - sometimes one-tenth of the Windows software.

Microsoft stayed low key on the issue as it was only one commercial deal and it respected decisions of the government.

The Windows series is still the major software product used by the government, Yu said.

But the decision may have negative knock-on effects for Microsoft as it could influence Beijing's counterparts - especially those provinces around it.

Lei Jun, president of Kingsoft, the biggest winner in the Beijing deal, said many government clients were following Beijing's lead in showing strong interest in Kingsoft products. He said eight other government projects - each worth more than 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) - were currently under negotiation.

(China Daily January 15, 2002)