Windows 7 has been big hit in China, according to early reports. Copies have been flying off the shelves. Much of them pirated.

While the Beijing government has been making some in-roads in curbing excessive piracy, it seems they still have a long way to go. According to a student quoted in the English language, government-run news agency China Daily, pirated copies of the new operating system continue to be sold openly in many malls and markets, and you can get a pirated copy of Windows 7 (non-beta presumably) for 20 yuan (which is about $3 bucks USD).

Microsoft has lowered the price of Windows 7 many Asian countries, including China, in order to better accommodate the general wealth disparity of the average folks, from the West to the East. In China MS's newest OS has had a significant price cut, and is now selling for a world-low price of $58 USD. But for many Chinese, this price seems absurdly high.

Concerns over losing market dominance might be keeping Microsoft reluctant to finding more ways to make their software more resistant to piracy -- but certainly, the company will be trying hard through marketing and political pressure to encourage mainland Chinese to purchase legitimate copies.

The piracy situation could not be much worse this time around than what happened with earlier MS operating systems. Despite a massive, multi-million dollar advertising campaign, Vista was thought to be an abysmal sales failure in China, according to third party analysts (Microsoft declined to release sales figures). Just the concept of buying an OS seems to be somewhat an unusual proposition to the average person in People's Republic -- last year this week, there was massive rage throughout the Chinese blogosphere over changes to the Windows Genuine Advantage that caused pirated desktop backgrounds to turn black.

The Asian piracy of Windows 7 isn't only limited to China of course -- the picture above was a taken in the Philippines, where the OS is selling for about $1.50.