The tl;dr: China (and Asia in general) has a high piracy rate - 82%. People pirate Windows XP, which comes with IE6. 87.69% in China use XP. Normally, Windows

The tl;dr: China (and Asia in general) has a high piracy rate - 82%. People pirate Windows XP, which comes with IE6. 87.69% in China use XP. Normally, Windows pushes an IE8 update, but it needs to authenticate the OS with Windows Genuine Advantage. Since the installation is pirated (and most people don't know how to spoof WGA), they are stuck with IE6.[1] With over 400 million internet users in just China, IE6 is going to be around for a long time. [1] Unless they download other browsers.