A Microsoft Windows outage that affected foreign companies and luxury hotels in China on Friday had little impact on the country’s key infrastructure, from airlines to banks, according to industry sources and social media posts.
As of 6pm local time, there were no reports of infrastructure failures in mainland China, but disruptions were reported at many airports across the Asia-Pacific region, from Hong Kong to Australia. Beijing and Shanghai international airports were operating normally, according to their websites.
At the same time, a Windows error causing computers to blue screen became a hot topic on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo as it affected many foreign company offices across China.
A Shanghai-based employee at a foreign company told The Post that a computer crash occurred in his office early Friday afternoon, affecting nearly everyone. His laptop display was stuck on a blue screen with the message “Recovery. Windows doesn’t seem to load correctly.”
The company’s information technology support instructed everyone to shut down their computers, await further instructions, and use mobile apps for instant messaging. The employee’s accounting work was subsequently delayed by the outage. [financial] According to the official, “the report will be delayed.”
Employees of another foreign company also reported experiencing a blue screen at around 1pm. Some employees were then able to reboot their computers, but were still unable to access the company’s website, which showed a “502 Bad Gateway” error. The employee said the company told employees that “global IT support has initiated the highest level of response to address the issue.”
On China’s Instagram-like social media platform Xiaohongshu, several users complained about the difficulty of checking in to international hotel franchises such as Sheraton, Marriott and Hyatt in Chinese cities.
Public services in China were largely unaffected and Microsoft’s China website or social media channels did not issue any emergency notices. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
China’s relative unscathedness from the outage reflects its reduced reliance on foreign service providers such as Microsoft Corp. and antivirus company CrowdStrike Inc. In recent years, China has waged a campaign against government agencies and key infrastructure operators to replace foreign hardware and systems with domestically produced ones.
The outage was caused by a software update from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike, which affected Windows-based systems around the world. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz confirmed via social media platform X on Friday morning local time that the company was working to resolve the issue.
A Chinese government official said the minimal impact of the Microsoft outage in China proves the country is making progress toward achieving its goal of a “secure and controllable” computing system.
On Weibo, Chinese netizens joked that Microsoft had “given them a half-day holiday,” with one commenter saying: “We’ve just switched to new computers with the HarmonyOS system, so we can’t join in the celebration.”
