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Red China could not afford to buy a lot of mainframes, but it has some. It did not install them for three decades, but for 15 years. No large society is immune from dependence on mainframes and embedded chips. Red China's military is huge, and its technology is decades behind the West's, which is going to be a huge advantage. But the nation still has connections with the West and its computers. To that extent, it will be hurt.
This is from NANDO NEWS (May 20).
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China is making inadequate preparations to prevent the "millennium glitch" from wreaking havoc in its computer systems at the turn of the century, experts were quoted as saying Wednesday.
"China hasn't seriously considered the year 2000 glitch, and many sectors are slow in taking efforts to make their electronics products ready for the 2000 change," Zhang Qi, the chairman of the China Computer Industry Association, told the official China Daily.
The country's banking, civil aviation and railways industries are off to a good start in heading off the problem, she said.
But a Ministry of Science and Technology official, Feng Jichun, warned that some sectors will "definitely" not be able to solve it in the less than 600 days that remain. . . .
In the race to modernize its economy over the last 15 years, the country's enterprises have collected vast amounts computer equipment and software from different parts of the world that ranges widely in its technological level and configuration. . . .
The China Daily said central government organs had begun to take action on the issue, with the former Ministry of Electronics Industry -- now part of the Ministry of Information Industry -- setting up a special research group with U.S.-based International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).
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