The diplomatic mating dance is well underway in the runup to Hu Jintao's visit to the US. Of course, from the Chinese point of view this mating dance may never be quite consummated, due to the refusal of the White House to throw a full state-banquet for Hu. That hasn't stopped China from ponying up $16.2 billion of commercial deals during Vice Premier Wu Yi's recent warmup visit in an attempt to douse some of Washington's protectionist fervor.

It has not escaped Imagethief's notice that Microsoft Chairman Bill the Gates is throwing the private equivalent of a state banquet for Hu at his megamansion outside Seattle. This seems like an amazing coup for Microsoft, a company that has had something of a resurgence in China over the past year or so, after several bleak years in the Chinese wilderness (and, perhaps not coincidentally, under the management of current Microsoft China CEO Tim Chen).

In what seems like a move pointed in Microsoft's direction, China has announced that it will ban the sale of "naked PCs", which are PCs sold without an operating system. With the somewhat over-optimistic headline, "Government ensures computers will use genuine software", the People's Daily reports:

All the computers produced and sold in China must install authentic operating system software, spokesman for the National Copyright Administration Wang Ziqiang said yesterday.

Governments are especially required to purchase computers with genuine operating system software.

"As the operating system is necessary to a new computer, the requirement at this time is specifically focussed on this type of software," Wang said.

No detailed list was given regarding the type of operating system required for installation.

According to a notice issued by three relevant central government departments, computer manufacturers and retailers that install pirate software will be punished.

The government document also noted that operating system software producers should provide a favourable price to computer companies.

Wang predicted that the price of computers will not go up after the new policy is adopted.

Computer manufacturers and operating system software producers are required to report their sales to the Ministry of Information Industry every year in February.

Those who refuse to do so, or those who provide fake figures, will be exposed to the public.

As for government, various levels of departments were required by another notice to establish a special fund on purchasing further software besides the operating system.

"This is a measure to ensure that all software used on government computers is authentic," Wang said.

Those computers with trademarks normally install authentic software, while most computers that are assembled by individuals do not, according to the spokesman.

Three issues come to mind. First is enforcement. Making sure Founder or Lenovo toes-the-line is easy, and they have incentive to cooperate (especially fast-internationalizing Lenovo). Making sure tens of thousands of DIY shops packing the enormous computer malls that litter China's big cities will be much harder.

Second, I haven't read the actual legislation (and somehow doubt that it would provide much more clarity), but I am curious how a "PC" is defined. Given that a DIY PC can be sold in various states of disassembly, at what point does it cease to be  PC and become parts? It's pretty easy to take a hard drive out and sell a non-functional PC without hard drive and an accompanying but completely separate hard drive bursting with pirated software. They're not integrated into a unit (although they could be in three minutes), so what does that mean by law? If the law isn't written so that the crime is selling software illegally duplicated onto any hard drive, you might never have a crime.

Third, and most important, is that "installing legal software" does not necessarily mean "installing commercial software". I note this sentence in the news story:
No detailed list was given regarding the type of operating system required for installation.
The problem, generally speaking, is that people in China want to run Microsoft Windows but don't want to pay for it. Fly-by-night computer shops are generally happy to install an unlicensed (ie. pirate) version of Windows, or to sell you a "naked" PC and allow you to intall your own pirate copy, purchased from the back-alley of your choice.

Imagethief's old consultancy in Singapore used to do PR work for the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore. Among other things that became obvious as we were working for them is that natural response of your shady PC dealer to this kind of law is to install a free operating system, such as any of dozens of Linux distributions. Everyone knows that almost all buyers will immediately install a pirate copy of Windows over the Linux, but the letter of the law has been satisfied. Linux is free, but it is validly licensed under the GPL. The PC is not naked. Net reduction in piracy: 0.0%.

Singapore's answer to that situation was to introduce end-user criminalization, which is a fancy of way of saying, "We don't care how the computer was sold to you, if it has an illegal operating system, you are criminally liable". This was a substantial change, since software piracy had previously been only a civil offense, with criminal charges reserved for pirate distributors and salesmen (the "big fish"). That meant that while an aggrieved software manufacturer could sue end-users pirating software, the state would not pursue a criminal prosecution. And no software manufacturer wants to be seen as the heavy (for a test-case in how this can go wrong, look at the bad PR the Recording Industry Association of America got when it started suing teenage music downloaders).

So, China has introduced a law that looks, at first glance, like complete PR prior to Hu's US visit. Of course, the devil is in the details and we'll see how such a law might be implemented and enforced. But, assuming it is enforced at all, I'd suggest looking out for a Linux-loaded PC coming to a computer mall near you, with a pirated Windows installation disk in the box along with the warranty card.

Disclosure: Imagethief is not a lawyer, but he is a computer geek. When confronted with this kind of situation, he thinks, "how would I, as a geek", try to get around it? This is, of course, a purely academic mental exercise. Anyway, I use a Mac, which can't be bought without an operating system.

Related: Silicon Hutong on Lenovo's premature discarding of the "IBM" brand, from this New York Times story.