Clarification needed about recent news articles

Hi
I was wondering about the news article regarding the virus attacks in China. Most of the links to the main article dont seem to be working but I read about it at Computer Security Now and Help Net Security. Here is what was said at Help Net...

"At least 80 per cent of computers in China have been affected by viruses, which increasingly spread through file downloading and Internet surfing, a computer security monitoring organization said Wednesday.

Half of the infected machines have suffered data loss, unbootable systems or difficulty in browsing the Web, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre said in its latest survey.

Only 16 per cent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack, while last year, nearly one in three users said they suffered no computer infections, said Zhang Jian, chief engineer of the State-funded institution in Tianjin."

80% seems to be a pretty large number to me. What confuses me though is that to my understanding most people in China use *nix boxes, because of their distrust in MS and the american government. TechTv had a few articles about this I believe if you want to read more about it. There are about 2 million users of *nix in China I believe. I know *nix boxes have been more or less targeted recently, but many major worms and viruses like bugbear, klez, and opaserv dont affect *nix boxes (i think). Slapper cant really account for that many people can it? Anyone know whats going on? Is this 80% number misleading or is this something Linux users should be worried about? Thanks in advance

 

Although use of Windows XP has grown rapidly among Web users worldwide, adoption rates of the new OS can still vary widely from country to country. For example, XP has a faster adoption rate in Germany than that of the global average – almost 24 percent of its Internet population uses Windows XP. In China however, only 8.74 percent of Web users have adopted Windows XP
Source: http://www.statmarket.com/cgi-bin/sm.cgi?sm&feature&week_stat

The articles you referred to are most likely based on Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/printerfriendly.jhtml?type=internetnews&StoryID=1557133

Regards,

Pieter