Overview of China’s Independent Innovation (Xinchuang) Industry: Market Size, CPU, OS, Database, and Security Landscape

According to preliminary estimates, the global computing industry reached a market size of US$1.14 trillion in 2023, while China’s computing market accounted for about US$104.3 billion (approximately 10% of the world total). Assuming a 50% share for the Xinchuang sector, the domestic Xinchuang market is projected to exceed 365 billion CNY, with overall market capacity surpassing one trillion CNY.

The Xinchuang ecosystem is extensive and can be divided into four major layers: basic hardware, basic software, application software, and information security. The most critical links in the industry chain are chips, complete machines, operating systems, databases, and middleware.

China’s CPU market shows huge scale and potential. Major domestic CPU participants include Loongson, Zhaoxin, Feiteng, HaiGuang, ShenWei, and Huawei. Zhaoxin and HaiGuang use X86‑based designs, Feiteng and Huawei rely on ARM licenses, Loongson develops its own MIPS‑based ISA, and ShenWei employs the self‑developed SW64 architecture. The government aims for a 70% domestic chip self‑sufficiency rate by 2025.

CPU instruction sets are split into CISC (e.g., Intel’s X86) and RISC (e.g., ARM). Historically, Intel’s CISC dominated the general‑purpose CPU market, while ARM’s RISC has become prevalent in mobile devices, capturing about 95% of the global mobile‑chip licensing market.

The CPU supply chain remains largely overseas‑controlled. China has made progress in IC design (Huawei HiSilicon, Spreadtrum) and advanced packaging (Tongfu’s 7 nm AMD chip packaging), but still lags in sub‑14 nm process technologies, relying on a “foreign‑loop + domestic‑loop” model.

Xinchuang operating systems have begun to form a competitive landscape. As foundational software that bridges hardware, databases, middleware, and applications, domestic OS products have achieved significant compatibility and large‑scale deployment across major OEMs such as Lenovo, Huawei, Tsinghua Tongfang, China Great Wall, and Sugon, as well as a wide range of enterprise software.

Database demand is driven by explosive data growth and increasing complexity. The market includes global giants (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, AWS), domestic cloud providers (Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud), hardware vendors (Huawei, ZTE), and leading Chinese DB firms (DM‑Database, Kingbase, GBase, Shenzhou Information). Open‑source projects such as Huawei’s GaussDB and PingCAP’s TiDB have gained substantial community support, with TiDB receiving over 25 000 GitHub stars and 12 000 contributors.

Middleware, positioned alongside OS and databases, continues to grow steadily, with IBM and Oracle holding a combined 51% market share, while domestic vendors (e.g., Dongfangtong, Puyuan, Baolande, Zhongchuang, Kingdee Tianyan) occupy the second tier.

Information security is a massive and fast‑growing market, essential for the orderly construction of a digital China. With the rise of cloud computing, IoT, and new digital infrastructures, security requirements are expanding, and compliance frameworks such as “Multi‑Level Protection 2.0” are being enforced across both public and private sectors.

Sources: China Xinchuang Industry Development Whitepaper (2021) and related research reports. The article also contains promotional material for a comprehensive technical documentation package.