Not Every Tech Story Out of China is about Piracy

Even if China sometimes seems like a giant den of intellectual property theft, the somewhat large (so we hear) nation is taking its own steps toward a homegrown tech industry by introducing computers with more locally-made parts than ever. The boxes, manufactured by Lemote Technology, will have Chinese-built processors, 40-gig hard drives and run Linux. The best part? They will retail for around $200 US. According to Tech.Blorge, the Chinese chip-building program didn't even start until 2001 and that an all-Chinese computer is a big step:

Does this mean we will see a rash of computers from China coming on sale? In fact, this has been the case for a long time. It is just they had different labels: IBM (now Lenovo), Dell, Hewlett-Packard and the rest. The only differences were that these were badged machines that ran an Intel chip and Microsoft Windows.

Now the Chinese computers can run a chip made in China and operate with Linux. And that is a wondrous revolution.