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I regularly see articles pop in here about OS development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English about what’s actually happening

I regularly see articles pop in here about OS development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English about what’s actually happening. Could anyone give an overview of what Huawei and Vivo are doing? I understand it’s mostly RTOS to use on phone. How does it compare to QNX and Linux? Is it as ambitious as Fuchsia? Apparently they are shipping. It’s weird that we have reached a point where there seem to be two worlds not talking to each other much.

6r17 1y ago
I think there might be more of this coming. The era where US was leading everything and expecting everyone to be a good boy who report everything is long gone due to the current state of affairs in the tech world. I'm not Chinese but I can only support such efforts that make everyone less reliable on main actors. That said they even share their work so it's not like they are going full mute.
- rbanffy 1y ago
  China's emergence was inevitable - they have the numbers. Last one I heard was 200 million people in STEM careers alone. That's more than the entire US workforce. I expect technological development to explode and my advice is for anyone interested in it to learn Mandarin. Including myself.
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    > I expect technological development to explode and my advice is for anyone interested in it to learn Mandarin. Including myself. My father said the exact same thing in the 80's but it was Japanese.
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      China’s prospects are mic better - like I said, they have the numbers to outperform everyone else. Japan was a completely different case.
Sytten 1y ago
My understanding is that Harmony OS is a full fledge OS at this point. We will start hearing more about it when devs will need to support it for their mobile apps that ship to LATAM and Africa.
VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
> I regularly see articles pop in here about OS development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English It's challenging for open source communities in the west to collaborate with their counterparts in China primarily because of language, but also the collaborations can't really happen in the public places that we're all used to. Western social platforms are blocked in China, and Chinese social platforms are not appealing to the west for one reason or another. Even places like Github are frequently blocked on partially inaccessible in China. So there really just isn't any good place for people to meet and collaborate, and learn from each other.
AlecSchueler 1y ago
> development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English about what’s actually happening. For years I've had this issue with pretty much everything happening in China, from business to politics to culture. For me personally, getting a window into China has been the number one game changer with LLMs. It's easier than ever to find and digest Chinese sources.
- jorl17 1y ago
  Do you have any resources (search engines, prompts, MCP, other tools) to help with this? I feel that it is quite obvious the next century will have China leading the pack, and I'd really like to be able to prepare for that.
  - alisonatwork 1y ago
    I'm not sure what the parent poster is getting at about information on Chinese business, politics and culture being hard to find because that stuff is widely written about in the global media, and there are plenty of English language sources. It almost seems counterproductive to provide links to resources because it's artificially limiting what you will be exposed to, but here we go anyway... China Media Project (media analysis) - https://chinamediaproject.org/ https://chinamediaproject.org/ China Leadership Monitor (political analysis) - https://www.prcleader.org/ https://www.prcleader.org/ Made in China Journal (social analysis) - https://madeinchinajournal.com/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/ What's on Weibo (pop culture reporting) - https://www.whatsonweibo.com/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/ The China Project (formerly SupChina, general reporting) - https://thechinaproject.com/ https://thechinaproject.com/ * edit to add: seems like The China Project shut down end of 2023, but leaving the link for context Sixth Tone (state-owned media specializing in human interest stories) - https://www.sixthtone.com/ https://www.sixthtone.com/ On the state-owned media tip there are also more blatant propaganda outlets like Global Times, People's Daily etc, plus private-owned media that largely toe the party line like South China Morning Post. There are also a set of mostly US-based thinktanks that do solid macro-level reporting on geopolitical and economic issues, guys like Jamestown, CSIS, German Marshall Fund etc. Then there are countless blogs and newsletters and influencers who report on specific niches, everything from economic analysis to boyslove fandom... You can jump on Bilibili to watch shows and see all the "bullet chat" jargon and memes, you can rub shoulders with the upper middle class on Xiaohongshu, read millions of Steam reviews or check out the forums of games popular in China, follow ABC or expat channels on YouTube etc. I find it very hard to believe that people in 2025 can't find any information about what's going on in China. All that said, I do share the sense that there is a bit a trough between Chinese tech workers and foreign tech workers, and it's because most Chinese tech workers don't tend to prioritize learning English to the same degree that tech workers around the rest of the world do. There are lots of publications that report on the Chinese tech industry from an investor or economic perspective, probably written by all those MBAs who went to study overseas, but nerd-to-nerd level exchange is lacking imo. I suppose you could ask an LLM to summarize content from v2ex.com (HN-ish Reddit), tieba.baidu.com (Reddit-ish Reddit), segmentfault.com (StackOverflow) etc, but that doesn't really do much to engage in a social way so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Chinese-language Github projects are one place you could explore, if you specifically want to interact with developers over there.
megatron2009 1y ago
It's time to learn Chinese. Especially with advances in RISC-V
- elcritch 1y ago
  A bit funny since logographic languages are the original CISC.
- yaris 1y ago
  /offtop, but could not help... Optimists learn English, pessimists learn Chinese, realists learn AK-74 (or M-16 or whatever one's military is using).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
alidon 1y ago
Huawei created and are currently shipping a microkernel OS not just on phones but in routers, appliances, vehicles. https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...
kllrnohj 1y ago
It's even harder to get an accurate picture of what Chinese companies are actually doing. Like the wiki page for Huawei's OS Next is pretty incredible. By which I mean, rather actually unbelievable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT They created a brand new microkernel with Linux ABI and driver support in containers? Or... did they just slightly fork Linux and pretend they invented it?
- mithrilskeleton 1y ago
  I think this comment is emblematic of a broader western trend underestimating recent Chinese technological development. It is understandable, given how backward they were for so long. The last five years though, things have really gotten crazy over there in terms of investment and progress.
  - kllrnohj 1y ago
    Anyone claiming to have made a microkernel, seemingly quickly, with Linux ABI and driver compatibility while supposedly being 10-20% faster would also be getting the same amount of skepticism. Especially if that was just one component of a supposedly entirely new OS that quickly replaced something decades established without regressing user experience or features
- Ericson2314 1y ago
  Seeing Illumos lx-branded zones and WSL1, I think it is plausible that this actually does that. It is less research-level hard then simply requiring a lot of person-hours to slavishly reproduce an underdefined interface.
- usamoi 1y ago
  They published a paper for it, which includes more details. https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...
  - kllrnohj 1y ago

6r17 1y ago

I think there might be more of this coming. The era where US was leading everything and expecting everyone to be a good boy who report everything is long gone due to the current state of affairs in the tech world. I'm not Chinese but I can only support such efforts that make everyone less reliable on main actors. That said they even share their work so it's not like they are going full mute.

rbanffy 1y ago
China's emergence was inevitable - they have the numbers. Last one I heard was 200 million people in STEM careers alone. That's more than the entire US workforce. I expect technological development to explode and my advice is for anyone interested in it to learn Mandarin. Including myself.
- MisterTea 1y ago
  > I expect technological development to explode and my advice is for anyone interested in it to learn Mandarin. Including myself. My father said the exact same thing in the 80's but it was Japanese.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    China’s prospects are mic better - like I said, they have the numbers to outperform everyone else. Japan was a completely different case.

Sytten 1y ago

My understanding is that Harmony OS is a full fledge OS at this point. We will start hearing more about it when devs will need to support it for their mobile apps that ship to LATAM and Africa.

VWWHFSfQ 1y ago

> I regularly see articles pop in here about OS development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English It's challenging for open source communities in the west to collaborate with their counterparts in China primarily because of language, but also the collaborations can't really happen in the public places that we're all used to. Western social platforms are blocked in China, and Chinese social platforms are not appealing to the west for one reason or another. Even places like Github are frequently blocked on partially inaccessible in China. So there really just isn't any good place for people to meet and collaborate, and learn from each other.

AlecSchueler 1y ago

> development happening in China but I find it very hard to find resource in English about what’s actually happening. For years I've had this issue with pretty much everything happening in China, from business to politics to culture. For me personally, getting a window into China has been the number one game changer with LLMs. It's easier than ever to find and digest Chinese sources.

jorl17 1y ago
Do you have any resources (search engines, prompts, MCP, other tools) to help with this? I feel that it is quite obvious the next century will have China leading the pack, and I'd really like to be able to prepare for that.
- alisonatwork 1y ago
  I'm not sure what the parent poster is getting at about information on Chinese business, politics and culture being hard to find because that stuff is widely written about in the global media, and there are plenty of English language sources. It almost seems counterproductive to provide links to resources because it's artificially limiting what you will be exposed to, but here we go anyway... China Media Project (media analysis) - https://chinamediaproject.org/ https://chinamediaproject.org/ China Leadership Monitor (political analysis) - https://www.prcleader.org/ https://www.prcleader.org/ Made in China Journal (social analysis) - https://madeinchinajournal.com/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/ What's on Weibo (pop culture reporting) - https://www.whatsonweibo.com/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/ The China Project (formerly SupChina, general reporting) - https://thechinaproject.com/ https://thechinaproject.com/ * edit to add: seems like The China Project shut down end of 2023, but leaving the link for context Sixth Tone (state-owned media specializing in human interest stories) - https://www.sixthtone.com/ https://www.sixthtone.com/ On the state-owned media tip there are also more blatant propaganda outlets like Global Times, People's Daily etc, plus private-owned media that largely toe the party line like South China Morning Post. There are also a set of mostly US-based thinktanks that do solid macro-level reporting on geopolitical and economic issues, guys like Jamestown, CSIS, German Marshall Fund etc. Then there are countless blogs and newsletters and influencers who report on specific niches, everything from economic analysis to boyslove fandom... You can jump on Bilibili to watch shows and see all the "bullet chat" jargon and memes, you can rub shoulders with the upper middle class on Xiaohongshu, read millions of Steam reviews or check out the forums of games popular in China, follow ABC or expat channels on YouTube etc. I find it very hard to believe that people in 2025 can't find any information about what's going on in China. All that said, I do share the sense that there is a bit a trough between Chinese tech workers and foreign tech workers, and it's because most Chinese tech workers don't tend to prioritize learning English to the same degree that tech workers around the rest of the world do. There are lots of publications that report on the Chinese tech industry from an investor or economic perspective, probably written by all those MBAs who went to study overseas, but nerd-to-nerd level exchange is lacking imo. I suppose you could ask an LLM to summarize content from v2ex.com (HN-ish Reddit), tieba.baidu.com (Reddit-ish Reddit), segmentfault.com (StackOverflow) etc, but that doesn't really do much to engage in a social way so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Chinese-language Github projects are one place you could explore, if you specifically want to interact with developers over there.

megatron2009 1y ago

It's time to learn Chinese. Especially with advances in RISC-V

elcritch 1y ago
A bit funny since logographic languages are the original CISC.
yaris 1y ago
/offtop, but could not help... Optimists learn English, pessimists learn Chinese, realists learn AK-74 (or M-16 or whatever one's military is using).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

alidon 1y ago

Huawei created and are currently shipping a microkernel OS not just on phones but in routers, appliances, vehicles. https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...

kllrnohj 1y ago

It's even harder to get an accurate picture of what Chinese companies are actually doing. Like the wiki page for Huawei's OS Next is pretty incredible. By which I mean, rather actually unbelievable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT They created a brand new microkernel with Linux ABI and driver support in containers? Or... did they just slightly fork Linux and pretend they invented it?

mithrilskeleton 1y ago
I think this comment is emblematic of a broader western trend underestimating recent Chinese technological development. It is understandable, given how backward they were for so long. The last five years though, things have really gotten crazy over there in terms of investment and progress.
- kllrnohj 1y ago
  Anyone claiming to have made a microkernel, seemingly quickly, with Linux ABI and driver compatibility while supposedly being 10-20% faster would also be getting the same amount of skepticism. Especially if that was just one component of a supposedly entirely new OS that quickly replaced something decades established without regressing user experience or features
Ericson2314 1y ago
Seeing Illumos lx-branded zones and WSL1, I think it is plausible that this actually does that. It is less research-level hard then simply requiring a lot of person-hours to slavishly reproduce an underdefined interface.
usamoi 1y ago
They published a paper for it, which includes more details. https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...
- kllrnohj 1y ago