This is Part 3 (final) of a three-part series about building, running, and trying to distribute a RISC-V tool.
- Part 1: I built a fetch tool that only runs on RISC-V
- Part 2: I bought a SATA SSD instead of NVMe by mistake — Orange Pi RV2 review
Part 3 (this post): I tried to reach China — Creating a Gitee account as a foreigner
In Part 1, I built a RISC-V-specific tool. In Part 2, I ran it on real hardware. The natural next question: who's the audience?
Most RISC-V chip vendors are Chinese. SpacemiT, T-Head (Alibaba), Allwinner, Sophgo, Sipeed — the list goes on. The largest RISC-V developer community is in China. If I wanted riscfetch to reach the people most likely to use it, I needed to figure out how to get it in front of Chinese developers.
GitHub is accessible from China, but it's slow and unreliable behind the Great Firewall. Many Chinese developers use Gitee (码云), often described as "the Chinese GitHub."
"Can't I just sign in with my GitHub account?"
I thought it would be simple. Here's what actually happened.
Gitee vs. Gitea: not the same thing
First confusion: Gitee and Gitea have similar names but are completely different.
| Service | What it is | China connection |
|---|---|---|
| Gitee (码云) | Chinese GitHub alternative | Run by a Chinese company, for China |
| Gitea | Open-source self-hosted Git | No connection to China |
I was trying Gitee.
Creating an account: easy enough
Gitee's homepage has a "Sign in with GitHub" button. Click it, authorize the OAuth flow, and you have an account. No Chinese phone number required at this stage.
A popup asks you to bind a phone number. Hit "cancel." You're in.
"Oh, that was easy," I thought.
Creating a repository: this is where it breaks
I tried to create a new repository and set it to "Public."
The response: phone number verification required.
The message reads: "公开仓库需要绑定手机号" — public repositories require binding a phone number.
And the phone number field only accepts Chinese numbers (+86). Japanese numbers, American numbers — nothing else works.
Private repositories work fine
You can create a private repository and push code to it without any phone number. Branches, tags, everything works.
But a private repository defeats the entire purpose. Nobody can see it. Nobody can fork it. It's a dead end.
Exploring alternatives
Gists
Gitee has Gist equivalents ("代码片段" — code snippets). Same restriction. Public gists require a Chinese phone number.
The fork workaround?
"What if someone forks my repo and makes the fork public?"
Can't fork a private repository. Dead end.
The profile page: one loophole
Your profile page is public even without a phone number. You can set:
- A bio
- A website URL (I linked to my GitHub)
- A LinkedIn profile
So the strategy becomes: create a Gitee profile that points to GitHub. It's not much, but it's something.
The "Twitter Or Weibo" trap
Gitee's profile settings include a field labeled "Twitter Or Weibo."
"Oh nice, I can add my Twitter!"
I tried twitter.com/username. Rejected.
https://twitter.com/username. Rejected.
x.com/username. Rejected.
@username. Rejected.
Error message: "The weibo's format is error, please fill in the URL of your weibo homepage."
The field says "Twitter Or Weibo" but only accepts Weibo. A trap for foreigners.
The scorecard
| Feature | Without Chinese phone | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Account creation | ✅ | GitHub OAuth works |
| Private repos | ✅ | Nobody can see them |
| Manual push | ✅ | Branches and tags |
| Public repos | ❌ | Chinese phone required |
| Public gists | ❌ | Chinese phone required |
| Auto-mirroring | ❌ | Chinese phone required |
| Profile page | ✅ | Can link to GitHub |
| Twitter link | ❌ | Weibo only |
Why these restrictions exist
China's internet regulations require identity verification for publishing public content. A phone number is the most common verification method. This isn't Gitee-specific — it's the same across virtually all Chinese platforms.
It's not designed to exclude foreigners. It's designed to comply with domestic law. But the effect is the same.
The irony
RISC-V's biggest market is China. Most RISC-V chip makers are Chinese. The largest developer community is in China.
RISC-V was born as an open architecture — free for anyone to use, anywhere in the world. But the center of its ecosystem sits behind barriers that outsiders can't easily cross.
In the West, the assumption is "public by default, pay for private." In China, the logic is inverted. Public means regulated. Private means permitted.
This asymmetry is worth understanding if you work in the RISC-V space.
What actually works
If Gitee is a dead end for foreigners, what can you do?
Multilingual README — Add aREADME.zh-CN.mdto your GitHub repo. GitHub is accessible from China, just slow. This is the most reliable option.
Gitee profile as a signpost — Create a profile, link to GitHub. It's the one public thing you get.
Chinese social platforms — Weibo, Zhihu (知乎), BiliBili for visibility.
RISC-V community channels — RuyiSDK's tool catalog, RISC-V Summit China, PLCT Lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
If you're serious about reaching Chinese developers, you either need a Chinese phone number or a collaborator in China.
Wrapping up the trilogy
Part 1: built the tool. Part 2: ran it on real hardware. Part 3: tried to reach the biggest market and hit a wall.
It's not a clean success story. But it's an honest record of what the RISC-V ecosystem looks like from the outside. The hardware is fascinating, the software works, and the market access has unexpected barriers.
I hope this saves someone the time of discovering it the hard way.