National governments are some of the biggest Windows customers in the world.
From the U.S. government to the U.K. government, Windows is easily the OS of choice for government organizations around the world.
The Chinese government is no longer one of those organizations.
China recently banned Windows 8 from all government computers. The ban comes from the Central Government Procurement Center.
You may think the ban is about preventing spying and avoiding leaks through hidden back doors, but apparently that’s not the case. Instead, China is banning Windows 8 to save energy.
Of course, like many things in China, the things government organizations say aren’t necessarily true. Avoiding Windows 8 likely has a lot to do with security and little to do with ‘going green’.

Approximately 7 in 10 government PCs in China still run Windows XP despite its recent end to service.
Windows XP is now unsecure and the logical move is to upgrade to the newest Windows operating system, Windows 8. China, however, doesn’t seem to have any plans for Windows in its future.
Instead, China is reportedly planning to upgrade government computers to Chinese-based Linux distributions like StartOS and KylinOS, neither of which is as functional or popular as Windows.
Basically, China has a choice between using operating systems with known American backdoors like Mac OS X and Windows; or, they can use less versatile OSes like Kylin and Start. It’s an interesting conundrum and clearly the Chinese are taking the matter very seriously.