The biggest problem is all the websites that serve ActiveX plugins. Web apps are supposed to be platform-independent, that's one of their biggest advantages, but Microsoft sabotaged that with ActiveX. Microsoft did a tremendous amount of harm to internet users by producing so much platform-dependent web software.

   a) fix the websites that have ActiveX dependencies
   b) modify a single web-browser to support ActiveX like IE6 used to

The number of Chinese websites out there with ActiveX dependencies is probably much greater, and you can't really "port" a website. Good luck getting all those Chinese web developers to fix their sites.

If Canonical bundled a web browser that supported ActiveX, that would temporarily resolve the problem (while enabling it to perpetuate), but I'm not sure if Microsoft's licenses even allow a non-IE browser to re-implement ActiveX.

So, I think that not being able to browse many Chinese websites on other platforms is the main thing that keeps Chinese users locked into IE/Windows right now.

Perhaps, though, my knowledge is outdated and ActiveX plugins aren't as ubiquitous in China as they used to be.

Is Chinese support in Windows dramatically better than in OS X? I found the level of stylus support in Windows to be head and shoulders higher in quality than Apple's. Perhaps it is the same with languages.