What an interesting message this sends

Piracy pays off.

Interesting.

I wish that would trickle down to the other markets, as well.

Though I suspect that the idea behind this is that, in China, very few people would ever pay for the official deal unless its dirty cheap, so they want to make at least a little money there.

In the UK/US/etc., they're feeding at the tit of corporate and government (in most cases) cash cows, so can continue to screw the general population without guilt.

So the solution would be for business and government to stop subsidizing Microsoft in those markets, and then the price would have to adjust accordingly. Wouldn't even have to be to OpenOffice and the other brown egg software - just Something Else. Probably won't happen, though, for a variety of legal and quasi-legal reasons.