China’s New IDN ccTLDs .中国 and .中國 are Approved: Why You Should Care

Importance of the Domain Landscape in China
China has over 1.3 billion people and the Chinese language is widespread. Rod Beckstrom, President of ICANN drove home this point in a recent press release stating: “One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.” Given the tremendous numbers at play, whoever wants to reach the vast Chinese customer base needs to understand native IDN domain preferences.

Recent Approvals
The news that broke this Friday was that the new Chinese ccTLDs, .中国 and .中國 (each meaning .China), have been approved, which will be managed by the Chinese registry CNNIC.

Value of .中国 and .中國
In valuing the newest IDN ccTLD the first question is what will be used most frequently by Chinese speakers; IDN.com, IDN.cn or IDN.中国? The answer is tied to the second question of how difficult will CNNIC make it to own and develop .cn or .中国 domains? Currently, residency requirements and corporate paperwork make it difficult to own .cn domains leading to a reduction in their usage and value. Similar treatment of .中国 by CNNIC is feared.

Given that IDNs are in their infancy, whoever monitors Chinese IDNs the closest will be ready to capitalize as it becomes clearer as to whether the .com or the ccTLD will prevail in this market. Regardless of the winner, an IDN ccTLD option in China marks huge progress for the visibility of IDNs and for the accessibility of the Internet in native languages.