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.

The switch in document delivery format came amid escalating trade tensions between China and the US, as Washington continues to wield its technological edge as leverage in its rivalry with Beijing.

Following China’s announcement of the new export controls, US President Donald Trump threatened that America would curb the export of “any and all critical software”.

In recent years, Beijing has intensified its push to reduce its reliance on foreign information technology, especially software and systems used across government institutions, state-owned enterprises, universities and key strategic industries.

The move helped China emerge almost unscathed from an outage of Microsoft’s Windows operating system in July 2024 caused by a faulty update provided by Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, with a host of critical service providers – from airlines to banks – having already reduced their use of foreign systems.

China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission announced in 2022 that state-owned enterprises were required to achieve full adoption of domestic software across their operational systems and daily office functions by 2027.

WPS Office is currently China’s leading domestic word processing software, while a host of domestic tech giants including NetEase, Tencent, Huawei Technologies and Alibaba Group Holding compete to provide email systems and cloud services.

Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.

Several foreign software providers whose systems were widely used in China in the past – including Adobe and Citrix owner Cloud Software – have either exited the Chinese market or scaled back their operations in the country in recent years.

Earlier this year, Microsoft closed its artificial intelligence research facility in Shanghai, after shuttering all its bricks-and-mortar stores on the mainland in 2024.

The stock price of Kingsoft Corporation, the holding company of WPS developer Kingsoft Office, had surged by as much as 18.9 per cent in Hong Kong as of Monday morning. Kingsoft Office stocks were also up 18 per cent on mainland exchanges.