China to Stop Using Microsoft Word

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IT Desk: Beijing now wants to prevent the United States from easily accessing and reading its government documents—echoing, in some ways, historical tactics where Europeans once read official proclamations aloud to local populations upon arrival in the Americas.

However, China’s current focus is not territorial conquest but control. In line with this objective, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce recently issued new guidelines on the export of rare minerals. The document, however, cannot be opened using Microsoft Word or any other U.S.-based software. For the first time, the ministry has published a file format that can only be accessed with China’s own word processing software, WPS Office, according to a report by the South China Morning Post from Hong Kong.

In 2022, China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission had directed all state institutions to adopt fully domestic software for official operations by 2027. Since then, WPS Office has become the country’s most widely used word processor. At the same time, companies like Tencent, Huawei, Alibaba, and NetEase have been developing their own email clients, cloud services, and other digital solutions.

In July 2024, a faulty update from Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disrupted Microsoft Windows systems globally. China, however, suffered minimal impact because its banks, airlines, and other critical service providers had already migrated from foreign systems to domestic software—a move that was deliberate, not coincidental.

Foreign software companies are gradually scaling back operations in China, with some forced to do so. Adobe and Citrix (now cloud software) have limited their businesses in the country, while Microsoft closed its AI lab in Shanghai and all mainland outlets by mid-2024. In September 2025, Chinese regulators instructed major companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, to halt testing and procurement of Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000 D chips. Previously, domestic tech firms such as Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance had been warned against using Nvidia’s H20 AI chips, citing national security and data risk concerns.

The WPS Office software, developed by Beijing-based Kingsoft, uses a unique coding system that prevents its files from being opened directly in Microsoft Word without prior conversion. The timing of this shift is particularly significant amid the current high-tension “cold war” between the U.S. and China. Technology, semiconductors, and digital infrastructure have all become strategic tools in this rivalry. Behind this move lies China’s broader goal: achieving technological self-reliance. Over the past few years, Beijing has been actively reducing dependence on foreign IT systems across government departments, state-owned enterprises, universities, and key industrial sectors.