China is notorious for giving up foreign platforms and software for its in-house alternatives. For example, he already has an alternative to Google called Baidu, and he recently completed his own "BeiDou" GPS alternative after 20 years. Now China is working on its GitHub alternative called ' Gitee ".
Reports to suggest that China is trying to locate its community of open source developers. Given its continuing tensions with the United States, China is now promoting Gitee by turning it into an independent open source code hosting platform for the country. This development follows Github's recent compliance with US sanctions law.
Gitee is not a new platform as it was created seven years ago. It already has a community of over 5 million developers and over 10 million repositories.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is working to locate source codes for companies on Gitee. But the main question is whether Chinese developers will migrate from Github to Gitee due to the current conflict.
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Gitee founder HongShu says they don't see themselves as a replacement for Github, but rather that "the world should be a hundred blooming and shining flowers."
The project would be led by a consortium led by Open Source China - the Shenzhen-based company behind Gitee. The code hosting platform is not only backed by the government, but also by research universities and the private sector, which includes a group of 10 organizations such as Huawei, which is already in rough waters due to the political storm in the United States.