HarmonyOS NEXT: Beijing’s Bid for Operating System Independence

W.Y. Kwok

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On October 22, Huawei’s Executive Director Yu Chengdong (余承东) introduced HarmonyOS NEXT, an updated operating system that has been wholly indigenously developed (The Paper, October 22). This milestone marks the culmination of a strategic initiative launched in 2012 when CEO Ren Zhengfei (任正非) first highlighted the risk associated with relying on foreign operating systems (Tencent News, October 22).

HarmonyOS NEXT is the closest the world has come to an operating system that excludes technology from the United States. As such, it is yet another indicator of the further fracturing of international standards at the level of both software and hardware that began over two decades ago with Beijing’s initial forays into building the “great firewall.”

The launch of the new operating system has been well-received within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yu Chengdong noted triumphantly that “in just one short year, [Huawei] has opened up a whole new world that foreign operating systems took over a decade to achieve (用短短的一年时间，开辟了一片新天地，走过了国外操作系统十几年生态发展的道路)” (STCN, October 22). State broadcaster CCTV hailed the launch as “another landmark achievement in breaking the constraints of ‘lacking a core and a soul’ and the technology monopoly of the West (打破“缺芯少魂”掣肘和欧美技术垄断的又一标志性成果)” (Tencent News, October 24). The phrase “lacking a core and a soul (缺芯少魂)” refers to a speech made by Xu Guanhua, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Minister of Science and Technology in 1999, who noted that the domestic industry lacked its own chip sector (the “core”) and its own operating system (the “soul”) (Xueqiu, December 7, 2022).