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"This demonstrates China's strategic handling of foreign technology business." On July 21, Singaporean cybersecurity expert Josh Kennedy White analyzed why China was able to escape the Microsoft "blue screen incident" and told the Chinese version of the BBC that the Chinese government has been vigorously developing local technology to avoid relying on foreign systems to strengthen national security.

On the evening of July 18th local time, after the US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike updated its main product "Falcon", Microsoft's Windows system was "hit", a blue screen appeared and it could not be used.

On July 19, local time, a blue screen appeared on the Windows computer display due to a CrowdStrike update failure. Visual China

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz responded on July 19 that the faulty update was the culprit of the incident, not a "security incident or cyberattack." They are actively working with affected customers to resolve defects in the update. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said on the same day that he was working with CrowdStrike to help customers safely restore their systems. Microsoft had restored the system that day.

From the evening of July 18 to the opening of July 19, CrowdStrike's stock price fell by about 14%, and Microsoft's stock price fell by nearly 2%. Grzegorz Drozdz, a market analyst at an investment company, told Euronews that given Microsoft's share in major U.S. stock indexes, the decline in the stock prices of affected companies, including Microsoft, could have a negative impact on major U.S. stock indexes.

From media, medical, banking, automobile manufacturing to aviation, almost all companies around the world that need to use the Internet are struggling to deal with this technical failure on July 19. The Federal Communications Commission said that 911 call services were also interrupted.

According to data released by Microsoft on July 20, 8.5 million Windows devices were affected worldwide. Microsoft Vice President David Weston said that this number is less than 1% of the total number of Windows devices in the world, but the "broad economic and social impact" caused by this incident reflects that companies running many critical services are using CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike's official website shows that its security software was launched in 2012 and currently 298 Fortune 500 companies use the company's products.

The BBC said that the figures given by Microsoft mean that this may be the largest cyber incident in history. The Associated Press reported on July 22 that the impact of Microsoft's "blue screen accident" lasted until last weekend. The wide impact of this incident shows the fragility of the digital world, which relies on a few companies to provide services.

Journalist Edward Ongweiso wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that the wealth, business and customers lost by CrowdStrike and Microsoft will eventually return, and the real sufferers are those who cannot use emergency services, hospitals and airports. Just like previous Internet accidents, monopoly companies will always recover, and if this situation continues, everyone will suffer.

On July 19, local time, some of Microsoft's applications and services experienced access delays, incomplete functions, or blue screen inaccessibility, causing the Cancun Airport in Mexico to shut down. IC Photo

In the United States, government officials have pointed their guns at Microsoft. The Washington Post reported that regulators and lawmakers from across the political spectrum have warned that the Windows outage shows the dangers of concentrating so much power in one company. A Microsoft spokesperson responded that the incident was caused by CrowdStrike's coverage, not Microsoft's.

The BBC said that while most countries in the world were struggling with the "blue screen crash", one country was basically unscathed: China. The reason why China escaped was that it almost never used CrowdStrike. Few Chinese institutions would buy security software from American companies, so China was not as dependent on Microsoft and CrowdStrike as other countries.

More and more Chinese government agencies and enterprises are beginning to replace foreign IT systems with domestic ones. A report by China News Service in 2014 showed that China had already begun to promote the use of domestic security software at that time. Now, China's cybersecurity market is basically dominated by local companies.

"This demonstrates China's strategic handling of foreign technology business," said Josh Kennedy White, a Singapore-based cybersecurity expert. White said Microsoft does business in China by working with local partners, a model that shields China's essential services from global endpoints.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that Chinese cybersecurity companies are accelerating the promotion of their own software by taking advantage of Microsoft's widely-influenced "blue screen incident". 360, one of China's largest cybersecurity companies, said its products are "more reliable, more stable, more comprehensive and more intelligent". Tencent Holdings' PC Manager platform said that some users reported to them that they had encountered a "blue screen of death" and they recommended users to use CrowdStrike's official solution.

The report said that in the face of increasing and increasingly stringent export restrictions and technology sanctions from the United States, China is reducing its reliance on foreign technology. This incident gives China more reason to seek technological self-reliance.

This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.