Back in June, when Microsoft just announced Windows 11, the company had also revealed the new minimum system requirements. It was obvious that in some countries users will have issues with moving to the new OS.
China is one of such countries. They prohibit to use foreign TPM chips, which are now included in the system requirements for Windows 11. It is unlikely that Microsoft did not know about the restrictions existing in the country. What remains unknown is why this issue was not somehow resolved before the official release of the operating system.
William Li, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, says that in some cases Microsoft is forced to bypass its own TPM requirements in countries such as China and Russia. However, nowadays, exceptions are made only for large corporate clients, and the company has not yet offered any solution for ordinary consumers. As a result, many Chinese users are unable to upgrade to Windows 11, as their computers are not compatible with the new OS, and they are unable to obtain the required TPM hardware.
It is worth noting that the country's TPM policy could be related to the ongoing economic conflict between the US and China over the production of microcircuits. Instead of TPM, the country uses its own implementation of a cryptographic module called TCM (Trusted Cryptography Module).
Due to this, the users will be forced to bypass the TPM 2.0 requirement in order to install Windows 11.
Update: Some of our readers from China report that only TPM 1.2 is banned. So, the issue might be overrated, with the TPM 2.0 hardware being legal in China.
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Well yeah! We don’t want to open our back door for them, and they don’t want to open thiers for us either.