Tuesday September 21 3:47 AM ET China Reports First Crash From Four Nines Bug Full Coverage Year 2000 Problem BEIJING (Reuters) - A pharmaceutical factory in China suffered a computer crash on September 9, 1999 when the system read the date as a command to stop, the China Youth Daily reported Tuesday. A system at the factory on the southern island of Hainan read the date as an old programming cut-off code in which four nines were used to tell computers to stop processing data, it said. China, believed to be one of the less well-prepared countries for the Y2K computer bug that some feared the four nines code would foreshadow, had reported no problems on September 9. The newspaper said the Hainan factory suffered a crash of 11 systems and 20 platforms, but production was not affected. The factory director was warned the systems were not millennium-compliant, but ignored requests for new computer equipment and service systems, the newspaper said. The Y2K, or millennium, bug could cause chaos in old computers programmed to recognize years by the last two digits and could confuse 1900 with 2000 and crash. A State Department report published earlier this month said inland Chinese cities faced potential Y2K computer problems affecting banking, communications, medical services and power. However, China reported Monday that a third and final Y2K test of its financial system over the weekend was a success.