Beijing Issues Documents Without Word Format Amid US Tensions (scmp.com) 146
An anonymous reader shares a report: China's expansion of its rare earth export controls appeared to mark another escalation in the US-China trade war last week. But the announcements were also significant in another way: unusually, the documents could not be opened using American word processing software.
For the first time, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a slew of documents that could be directly accessed only through WPS Office -- China's answer to Microsoft Office -- as Beijing continues its tech self-reliance drive. Developed by the Beijing-based software company Kingsoft, WPS Office uses a different coding structure to Microsoft Office, meaning WPS text files cannot be opened directly in Word without conversion. Previously, the ministry primarily released text documents in Microsoft Word format.
For the first time, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a slew of documents that could be directly accessed only through WPS Office -- China's answer to Microsoft Office -- as Beijing continues its tech self-reliance drive. Developed by the Beijing-based software company Kingsoft, WPS Office uses a different coding structure to Microsoft Office, meaning WPS text files cannot be opened directly in Word without conversion. Previously, the ministry primarily released text documents in Microsoft Word format.
Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use Libre Office formats if they want to avoid MS?
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That is a very good question. Does anybody know what "WPS Office" actually uses?
Re: Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:3)
OK, now I respect the Chinese government's troll move.
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WPS stands for Winnie-the-Pooh Software. Just kidding.
WPS is the file format from the Microsoft Works software suite. Microsoft Works was discontinued in 2009 but many of today's word processor programs can still open .WPS document files. In fact, if you right click on a .WPS file and associate that extension with Word or LibreOffice Writer, you can just double-click on the .WPS file to open it.
If a software company in China decided to write their own office suite, standardizing on the Microsoft Works do
Re:Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:4, Informative)
Why not use Libre Office formats if they want to avoid MS?
Self-reliance (roughly translated) is a huge thing in China, historically and culturally significant.
Showing self-reliance ("our documents using our software") here is part of the show of 'strength' or independence. Whether it makes sense to everyone else is one thing, but I guarantee it makes sense within China from a domestic perspective.
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I am surprised how naive so many commenters seem to be on this issue. Releasing documents that are retaliation for tariffs only in your home format and in home developed software is very much part of the diplomatic statement being made here. This should be obvious.
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You're thinking rationally and practically but nationalism unfortunately is often at odds with those.
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They could have their master copy, and then see about merging changes into LibreOffice. This way, everyone wins. They get their own office suite... but so does everyone else, and I'm sure the bug fixes and feature additions can't hurt.
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But from a nationalism point of view you don't want everyone to win even if it would benefit yourself as well. It's not an absolute but it's the type of worldview that sort of necessitates a zero-sum view on things.
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How hard is it to change the file extension? I know Windows so probably hard if you can even see it and figure out it is just a Word document with a different extension.
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Sure there can be and there are definitely times where you should do the thing that benefits you even if it's not economically efficient it just has to come with a recognition of the tradeoffs and a goal.
Re: Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:3)
Re:Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yep, I have been wondering that. PDF, especially PDF-A is what this should be done in.
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Same. This is what PDF/A was designed to do, 20+ years ago. Only downside is that it may be too big, as sometimes it will need to include the fonts used.
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that is not a downside, it is good, why the hell i need to have installed chinese fonts or MS fonts to open a document?
if the document require it, include the font. if it doesn't require it, make the font to multiple alias and let the local reader choose one similar
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An Adobe-proprietary format is also not the answer.
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Yes, it absolutely is a shit format, but for distributing documents it's a widely deployed lowest common denominator that works for everyone. Unless you're suggesting we go back to fixed width text files (or you can figure out how to get the entire world to immediately start using LaTex) it's probably the best distribution format you're going to see without falling into the xkcd 927 trap.
Nope. (Score:2)
Nah, it is not.
that's what ODF is for.
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The FOSS crowd is known for avoiding likely law suits. IIUC, the WPS format would be likely found to be a copyright violation if one didn't have a powerful government on ones side. (Or at least a firm of powerful lawyers and deep pockets.)
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Also, how exactly the WPS format would be a copyright violation? LibreOffice can also save and open DOCX/PPTX/XLSX files. In fact, newer WPS Office versions use DOCX/PPTX/XLSX by default.
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This is what Kingsoft did right btw: They built their office suite around the DOCX/PPTX/XLSX from day 1, instead of doing what the StarOffice/OpenOffice lads did, which is define their own formats (and building their application around them) and then building imprecise converters from and to DOCX/PPTX/XLSX.
Do you think Star Division had a crystal ball and could foresee that their CPM Word processor needed to be compatible with a Mac word processor?
Things were different in 1985 and even a couple of years later when ported to MSDOS, or later when first ported to Win 3.1, which was when the rest of the suite was created. The European market was different back then too.
Re:Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Having flashbacks to the 90s when someone would email me a .doc file I couldn't open on my Amiga, and I'd send them back a WordWorth file with no extension at all.
If I was feeling particularly annoyed I might add "begin quoting [name]" (two spaces after begin) to my email, which would make Outlook think there was an attachment and crash.
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All it means is that someone will just make a conversion utility for Word and other office suites.
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It's been reported that the conversion is trivial. So this is purely symbolic + nuisance.
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Because that doesn't promote Chinese interests.
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It's not about not using MS. It's about specifically using the Chinese produced system and making everyone else they're working with use the Chinese produced system.
Self-inflicted from USA. (Score:2)
Haha.
China would not retain it's rare earths to USA if US wouldn't do a huge trade war.
that's self-inflicted from USA.
How to shoot yourself in the cojones.
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China has always used its resources to further its own power and influence in the world. While the trade war is a big part of this, it's more that Trump has played right into their hands and accelerated what they already were doing.
Re:Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:5, Informative)
Notice, i'm nor USA nor Chinese, but you must learn that saying things when looking to only one side will make you look stupid!
Now lets turn the table, with some minor changes to your text:
Yep. USA is employing economic screws to promote state power ... as has every city/state/nation since Gobekli-Tepi. It's all good ... and China should return the favor by rejecting ALL/ANY USA manufactured products or raw materials. Shut-down trading that has never been in China interests. If required China can go to a temporary war-time footing and refuse to sell everything to the USA or to "affiliated" partners. USA workers would see huge inflation and no good to buy and SA/Canada would finally get the USA attention they deserve as middle men to buy required Chinese products to keep their country to work. Some chinese economic sectors would suffer: no problemo, the state can cope with those losses. To repeat ... USA screws us we screw them ... all's fair.
go view this youtube and learn how impossible what you said would be, all because the USA profit margins are more important than the country and population and in the end, you may end dig your own grave...with a chinese build shovel : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Why not use Libre Office formats if they want to avoid MS?
The only reason to send official government communications to a foreign power in a document format that you know they can't read is: Fuck You.
That's the real reason.
Is it not obvious?
I'm sure the receiver "got the message".
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This isn't something they can't read. This is something that requires a trivial conversion. But you got the message correctly.
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Because it's not about not using Microsoft, it's about controlling what is used.
Do you really believe the officially sanctioned, government controlled word processor doesn't report back on everything written in it, with particular attention paid to a list of keywords?
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This has nothing to do with avoiding MS. That would be the tinyest fries in what is going on between the countries. On the most base level, they are saying, you are no longer the only game in town.
The US thinks they are technologically ahead, and based on the idea that China therefore needs the US, that they can win a trade war. China tells them to think again. The US only still has the lead in three areas, chips, aerospace, ad biotech, and it's losing it. China is confident in it's ability to be self-suffi
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Instead, the WPS formats are DOCX/PPTX/XLSX, to the point they can be opened by Microsoft Office if you change the file extension.
This is the smart thing Kingsoft did with WPS, they built their office suite around the DOCX/PPTX/XLSX formats from the start, instead of building their office suite around a unique format and then building imprecise converters from and to DOCX/PP
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Unfortunately LibreOffice's Chinese support isn't as good as WPS Office. Neither is MS Office's.
It's partly down to Unicode being a disaster and partly down to not enough native Chinese speaking developers working on LibreOffice and MS Office.
It took years for Microsoft to displace rivals in Japan for similar reasons. For many years the efforts at supporting Japanese keyboard input and Japanese language were sub-par, and even now a lot of people prefer alternatives to how Windows handles Japanese keyboards.
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Not Invented Here.
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Because that doesn't allow you to be nearly as petty and petulant towards your even-more-petty-and-petulant global rival.
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Cuz fuck you round eye.
Re: Why not OpenDocument Format? (Score:2)
Because they didn't want to "avoid MS" they wanted to flex.
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Ask the Argentinian soybean farmers how their US subsidies are going as they sell to China.
Alternative MS office? (Score:4, Insightful)
When people only provide MS office documents, than there is no problem? And why is it a US vs. China problem and not just a question of whose software they use? I'd think today one should probably use open document, but if one uses MS proprietary formats and another one WPS' proprietary format I don't see much difference. Buy the product or ask to get the document in another format. Welcome to the world of non-Microsoft users!
The irony here (Score:3)
Is that Microsoft has been quietly moving many Office-product related jobs to China over the years
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Not ironic at all. All part of the same "destroy the West" strategy. Microsoft recently admitted that they are running US military classified cloud systems with administrators in China and that they don't intend to fix that, just have some people watching them in theory.
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Microsoft recently admitted that they are running US military classified cloud systems with administrators in China and that they don't intend to fix that, just have some people watching them in theory.
What? Link please?
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even better - an actual Slashdot link from not so long ago:
https://slashdot.org/story/25/... [slashdot.org]
I'm a nobody and I don't use MS Office. (Score:2)
https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-wps-office (Score:2)
Not sure why this is problematic.
Governments of the world ought to use open source software - they should also fund its development, perhaps even employ developers to maintain it.
Using proprietary software that costs money excludes some users and is not auditable. Neither of those things are good for tax payers.
The only people that take issue with this are microsoft and its zealots.
The trade war.. (Score:3)
..is wrong and extremely counterproductive.
Trying to prevent China from obtaining tech is futile. There are LOTS of really smart Chinese scientists and engineers, many of whom used to come to the US to work. Those days are over.
Even worse, US corporations gave away almost all of our manufacturing to China in the search for short term profits.
This will not end well
Word isn't a great format for documents (Score:3)
It's too easy to change a Word document. If you want to distribute documents, PDF is a much better option, China or not.
Good move (Score:4, Interesting)
Perfect, maybe now many people will understand that sharing MS doc format is stupid, feel the other side for a change!
and maybe this push countries and companies that public format MUST be shared in public and truly open formats
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and by the way, if they use libreoffice, they can open the file... it is just not from microsoft and it is free...
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Yes. But is WPS a public and truly open format? I don't know.
PDF and OpenDocument are both formats originally created by American companies, so I can understand China's aversion to using them.
PDF is widely used, but I wouldn't call it truly open. It is a pain to read programmatically. Perhaps this is why it is widely used. It is difficult to alter.
OpenDocument is not widely used.
China could take the lead by creating a new document format that is better than PDF and better than OpenDocument. But this is
WPS Kingsoft same as MS Works format (Score:4, Informative)
File Format Specifications
The file format specifications of WPS document is not available publicly as Microsoft didn’t open the specifications to end users. WPS are binary files and can be opened with file format conversion filters created by Microsoft for Word processor. LibreOffice, NeoOffice, and OxygenOffice have included a general C++ library, libwps, that can extract text from many different versions of Microsoft Works.
Other WPS files
Here are other file types that use the.wpsfile extension.
Next thing .. (Score:2)
Work around the problem. (Score:2)
This is America. We used to invent ways to get what we want without the things we don't have. I believe that spirit is still there, it's just drowned out by the unending mountains of garbage we import and endless propaganda and marketing in our media.
The correct answer (Score:2)
Hilarious! (Score:2)
I find this very amusing.
It would be great if it also served as a wake-up call for everyone who insists on inflicting their files on everyone else in Microsoft Office or Google Docs format....but we all know that's never going to happen.
It's still amusing.
I kind of appreciate that (Score:2)
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Greenpeace never said "don't mine", only "don't mine dumbly". Maybe China does it dumbly because dictators don't care much if they sicken their population, and boot out Greenpeace.
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Just one more cretin that is trying to shift blame. The simple reality is that when you take the actual cost of mining into account, mining and refining in the US was not cost-effective.
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Re:We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
It's very easy to not have NIMBYs and not have lawsuits when nobody in your country has any rights as far as the government is concerned.
Yes, China can move fast on things. That isn't necessarily a good thing.
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Regulations aren't the problem. Don't be a tool.
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Regulations aren't the problem. Don't be a tool.
Regulations aren't the only problem. There are also other issues such as lack of institutional knowledge, lack of skill workers, huge capital costs, very long ramp-up times to create facilities and supply chains, and challenging economic viability especially in the face of cheap Chinese competition. Regulations often address environmental issues, and these exist at many levels, including federal, state, local, and private interests. Sometimes these interests manifest as regulations, but they can also man
Re: We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:2)
Chinese production is cheap because the governments commands it to be. China is not a market economy. The government sets production quotas, and companies that do not perform have their management jailed.
Re: We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:2)
China produces over 8 times more than the US.
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Yes. But the US is in 2nd place. Do you think being in 2nd place means "it cannot be done"? That would be insane.
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It wouldn't be cost-effective in China either were it not for state support.
There is no doubt that global free trade in commodities, in the absence of any government support, would be the most economically efficient thing to have. But China -- probably correctly -- identifies dependency on foreign supply chains for critical materials as a *security* issue. So they have indirect and direct subsidies, as well as state owned enterprises that operate on thin or even negative profit margins.
Since China does t
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Chinese reverse imperialism in file format! (Score:3)
You're feeding the diversionary sock puppet and propagating its stupid Subject. We don't need to increase the world's supply of stupidity. We need to find a way to convert anonymous stupidity into useful work. That would be the big victory against entropy!
On the story I think the point should be the reverse-imperialism. The Chinese government could have gone with ODF, but they deliberately preferred to insist on doing it their way--and they apparently have even gone the extra kilometer to annoy the rest of
Re:We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone recently managed to push through some legislation to start addressing this Biden-Harris Administration Takes Further Action to Strengthen and Secure Critical Mineral Supply Chains [archives.gov]
But that has been pretty much rolled back and replaced with... tariffs?
Impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the Mining Sector [csis.org]
Phases Out the Section 45X Tax Credit by 2033
The OBBBA introduces major revisions to the Section 45X Production Tax Credit for critical mineral components. As outlined in CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program’s November 2024 analysis, this credit offered a 10 percent incentive to taxpayers for costs associated with producing critical minerals to specified purity thresholds—including both extraction and materials processing expenses. Designed to boost domestic production of inputs essential to clean energy technologies, the credit was originally set to phase out by 2032 for most industries—except critical minerals, which were exempted to reflect the long timelines and capital challenges typical of mining projects. This indefinite extension was particularly important given the sector’s struggle to attract private investment amid falling commodity prices, prolonged permitting processes, and fierce competition from heavily subsidized Chinese producers.
The OBBBA eliminated this phaseout exemption for critical mineral components and imposes a phasedown with the credit dropping to 75 percent in 2031, 50 percent in 2032, and 25 percent in 2033 before ending on December 31, 2033. Now, only critical mineral projects that are operational before 2032 will access the full credit for a short number of years. Given the long timelines for developing new mines and ramping up production, the revisions to Section 45X will dampen the credit’s impact on the mining sector. Furthermore, the amended tax credit disincentivizes investment in newly discovered greenfield projects with longer timelines to production in favor of brownfield legacy mines that may be closer to production but have lower grade reserves.
That's not to say Trump hasn't made any moves, he did do a 10% stake in Trilogy metals a (Canadian?!) mining company so there could be movement there but still we're in this mess I would say primarily because he is simply getting out-negotiated by Xi and took us from a cold-war on trade into a hot war.
China’s rare-earths power move jolted Trump but was years in the making [washingtonpost.com]
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Even NPR [npr.org] knows it's changing as quickly as possible at this point, as a national security issue.
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No one wants refinement in the US due to pollution.
The pollution problem only exists because people can get away with polluting. Not only would a modern refining facility not work like those of yesterday, they wouldn't even be built in the same way in the USA vs China which people often point to as an example of the pollution they don't want at home.
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Re:We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Nixon did create the "woke" EPA.
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But Greenpeace and company shut all of that down.
If it wasn't completely obvious that you're full of it, that would be a real pick-me-up to environmentalists everywhere. They get pretty used to the idea that all of their efforts are for nothing. It takes immense effort to just get even a little token effort from government, corporations, the public, etc. to actually get anything done. They normally feel like Sisyphus, or someone chipping off little pieces of the visible part of the iceberg, knowing that 90% of it is underwater, and they're barely even mak
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Yes, because suddenly everyone in the mineral extraction industry started listening to Greenpeace all of a sudden, but only on this one sector of minerals.
Or, and just hear me out for a second: the minerals that could be bought from China were cheaper than the minerals we were extracting and refining here in the US, and economics made the decision like it always does.
Which is more likely?
Moron.
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Re: We used to mine these materials in the US (Score:2)
What do they gain from these posts? Serious question.
Is it just a distraction from the key topic: China, rare earths and the file format of the document?
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I won't accept anything except PDF from my own government, let alone a foreign government. That China refused to send these documents as PDF/A should be considered a provocation and act of war.
"An act of war" and you got upvoted?
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No that's a karma bonus.
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Man, Slashdot has changed over the year.
There ought to be a +5 Bonus for 5 digit UIDs.
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Nooo (face melting)
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Who said anything about Microsoft Works? Certainly not the article or the summary.
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WPS in this context is WPS Office, a Chinese office suite. https://www.wps.com/ [wps.com]
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I thought it was Word Perfect format.
Also, funny that they use the Latin alphabet.
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WordPerfect was WPD
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Because Chinese strong!