The FairWinds blog took a look at the changing landscape when it comes to Chinese domain names. For the most part Westerners focus on the numeric .com names that have been bought up from Chinese domain investors, companies and individuals. This article is focusing on the new Chinese gTlds. .Online and .Website.
From the article:
It’s time for American businesses to take notice, and consider if they should have a presence in this space.
Chinese-character TLDs offer Western businesses a way to tap into the vast Chinese consumer market in an organic and culturally adaptive way.
在线 (.ONLINE) and .中文网 (.CHINESEWEBSITE) opened to the public at the end of April and broke registration records within an hour of going live, according to the owner/operator of the two TLDs. Today, according to ICANN’s publicly available zone file data, the TLDs are in fifth and 15th place, among more than 100 new top-level domains, with website registrations of 33,838 and 15,580, respectively.
The Chinese State Commission for Public Sector Reform, having advocated for internationalized domain names for many years, is now set to reap the fruits of its efforts. As the applicant for .政务 (GOVERNMENT) and .公益(PUBLIC INTEREST), the reform office issued a directive two years ago encouraging government agencies and public interest organizations to register websites in the common domains of .政务.CN (GOVERNMENT) and “.公益.CN (.PUBLIC INTEREST) to acclimate the Chinese people to the use of Chinese character domains.
In March, the central government went a step further, mandating the use of Chinese-character TLDs for local governments, according to official documents. So, it comes as no surprise that the Chinese government to date has registered 20,452 domain names within the .在线 (.ONLINE) and .中文网 (.CHINESEWEBSITE) IDNs.
Read the full article here