[dhkl]

I worked for a Mainland Chinese manufacturing company for a while, and they run all their desktops on Windows 2000. They have several applications that targets IE only, and will not run (properly) on other modern browsers such as Firefox or Chrome.

What I have found is that the IT guys in China compile many "recovery disk" with a pirated copy of Windows that people use to reinstall their OS. A lot of these disks are XP-based, but more people are running Window 7 now.

Lastly, several Chinese companies have developed their own version of browsers. I haven't really looked into what kind of rendering engine they run, but they appear to be some kind of rebranded IE. Does anyone have the scoop on this?

[neolefty]

I think there's a very strong "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude in China, and most of the people I've met here don't consider IE 6 to be broke, so they see no reason to fix it. After all, every mainland Chinese website still supports it (circular, I know) ...

Still, new consumer machines often have Windows 7 installed, from what I've seen, so things are moving forward. I don't have any numbers though.

[underwater]

Maxthon is quite popular. They use Internet Explorer's Trident engine, newer versions also ship with Webkit and switch engines based on the site being rendered.