Information on Chinese Domain Names

Top-Level and Second-Level Domains

The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of China has launched its own Chinese top and second level domain names to organize the presence of Chinese web sites on the Internet. The rules and regulations for these domain names are set forth by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). CNNIC introduced Chinese Domain Names (CDN) on 17th January 2005. The recent CCNIC survey states that more than 5,000 applicants have registered for a Chinese top and second level domain names.

The Chinese domain name contains Chinese characters, and therefore is an internationalized domain name. In addition to .cn top level domain names, China has introduced three new Chinese top level domain names: .com (company), .china (China) and .net for registration. These registrations are not accredited by ICANN, but CCNIC has the sole authority over CDN registration. Under Chinese top level domain names, Chinese characters can be used as a second level domain name. Take for example a fictitious domain name “www.xyz.com.” .com is the Chinese top level domain name and .xyz is the Chinese language second level domain name.

However, individuals cannot register Chinese domain names. You can create a Chinese domain name by blending English alphabets (A-Z and a-z), Chinese characters, hyphen and numerals (0-9). In CDN, the domain must incorporate at least one Chinese character and its length cannot exceed twenty characters. In a Chinese domain name, you can use Traditional Chinese (TC) or Simplified Chinese (SC).

The Chinese Domain Name proffers a number of application services such as FTP, WWW and email via DNS. The CCNIC recognized registrars only have the capability to offer registration services for CDN. For registering Chinese domain names, you can contact any of the registrars from among the nine CCNIC accredited registrars. Currently, the CCNIC has reserved nine Chinese domain names, and the reserved names cannot be used for registration by any entity. The Chinese top and second level domain name related disputes are solved by CNNIC approved Chinese Domain Name dispute resolution institutes.