AFP, Beijing

China has launched its first homegrown open-source operating system for computers, state media said yesterday, as Beijing seeks to reduce its foreign dependence at a time of increased rivalry with the United States.

The announcement of the new system came just before US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was due to land in Beijing yesterday for meetings with Chinese officials aimed in part at stabilising relations between the world’s two leading economies.

The system, called OpenKylin, has been designed as a rival to the ubiquitous Windows and MacOS systems. Previous versions of the software had already been deployed on the computers of some government departments, state media said.

OpenKylin users have access to the software’s lines of code and can modify them as they wish, unlike Microsoft and Apple, which keep the workings of their Windows and MacOS systems secret.

China has long regarded that opacity as a vulnerability, one that has been reinforced in recent years by geopolitical tensions with the United States.