Sunny Cheung
OpenHarmony, an open-source version of Huawei’s HarmonyOS, is perhaps the most successful, widespread open-source operating system in the PRC today. It is the most popular open-source operating system on Gitee (码云), the PRC’s largest code hosting platform with 12 million users. OpenHarmony is increasingly used in a variety of sectors, with varying degrees of importance to the country’s national security. As such, it is seen as a strategic asset, helping orient the country toward its desired technology- and innovation-based future and achieve the Party’s goals of self-reliance and technological sovereignty. By developing its own open-source ecosystem, PRC technology is ultimately likely to have robust cybersecurity, reducing its vulnerability to cyberattacks, and safeguarding its supply chain security. Open-source systems, including OpenHarmony, are also deployed in a variety of national security and military-related applications, while also forming the basis for proprietary software that is used in closed-source military systems. This raises questions about continued international collaboration in the development of open-source technology.
RISC-V and OpenHarmony Integration
OpenHarmony is a versatile operating system that can run on a broad spectrum of devices powered by RISC-V processors, [1] from tiny sensors to full-scale data centers. Its initial adoption was driven by a perceived need to secure and stabilize supply chains (China Brief, December 15, 2023). OpenHarmony enhances RISC-V’s utility across various application scenarios, which makes it increasingly attractive to developers and manufacturers. At the 2023 and 2024 RISC-V summits held in the PRC, the use of OpenHarmony was on full display in new products such as tablets, edge computing gateways, and cloud desktop terminals (Sina, August 29, 2023).
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