During the 38th annual meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held in Brussels, the board from ICANN approved by voting, at 11 o’clock, on June 25, 2010 (17 o’clock on June 25, Being Time), that the international application of “.中国” domain name’s entry into root domain names had completed all evaluations. It means that “.中国”, as a Chinese language top-level domain, will be included in the root domain name system of internet in the globe.
“This resolution will be a great change to Chinese citizens in the globe. One in five people in the world speaks Chinese, which means China domain names increase the potential net citizens by 1 billion”, said by Rod Beckstrom, ICANN President and CEO.
CNNIC Director Maowei who was present at this conference indicated that, “It is a great success for the approval of CNNIC’s ‘.中国’ of both traditional and simplified versions by the board of ICANN since we carried out Chinese language domains research ten yeas ago and also a recognition of international society towards Chinese culture on the internet.
At present, CNNIC has completed technical debugging of “.中国” domain names and upgrading of top-level nodes. It is expected that each net citizen of Chinese language in the globe will, by typing in “.中国” domain names in the location bar of browser in any region of the world, be able to visit the relevant website; Users of China websites can directly register Chinese names into domain names in the form of “Chinese.中国” for net citizens to visit. “.中国” domain names, as a symbol of Chinese culture, will officially appear on the historical stage.
Events of China Domain Names
On June 3, 1997, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), with a view to exercise to exercise the responsibilities of national internet network information center, was organized by Chinese Academy of Sciences, which was authorized by competent authorities of the State. One of the important responsibilities of CNNIC is “internet addressing research and development”.
In 1999, Ministry of Information Industry (now Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), the competent authority of national informatization, officially authorized CNNIC to perform the development of Chinese domain names, which inaugurated the integration of Chinese characters into root domain name system of internet in the world.
On January 18, 2000, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) introduced the Chinese domain names registration testing system.
On November 7, 2000, the former Ministry of Information Industry published Notice on Management of Chinese Domain Names of Internet, standardized the Chinese domain name registration service and management and clearly authorized CNNIC to be Chinese domain name registry.
In September 2002, the former Ministry of Information Industry, while revising Measures on management of China Internet Network Domain Names, identified that “Chinese domain names are important parts of domain name system in China. Ministry of Information Industry encourages and supports the technical research, gradual promotion and application of Chinese domain name system”.
In November 2002, the former Ministry of Information Industry proposed that “The internet network domain name system in China was temporarily provided with three Chinese top-level domains, namely ‘中国’, ‘公司’ and ‘网络’” except for Top-level Domain ‘CN’” while publishing Notice on China Internet Network Domain Name System. Hereby, Chinese domain name registration system of CNNIC fully upgraded and promoted the services of Chinese domain names with the suffix of “.CN”, “.中国”, “.公司” and “.网络”.
On May 20, 2000, in order to solve the equivalence issue of traditional and simplified Chinese language faced by China Mainland, Hong Kong, Macaw and Taiwan, CNNIC, in combination with internet network information centers of Hong Kong, Macaw and Taiwan, founded Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CNDC) in Beijing and made research on technical issues of Chinese domain names so to unify China’s voice in the world.
On April 14, 2004, Multi-language Domain Names Registration Standard for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean formulated by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) together with JPNIC, KRNIC and TWNIC was published to be RFC3742 by IETF, the formulation organization of technical standards of international internet. It was the second IETF standard in China.
On October 19, 2006, Standard for Chinese Domain Name Registration and Management guided and formulated by CNNIC was published by IETF, the formulation organization of technical standards of international internet, to be RFC4713, which was the second IETF standard guided and formulated by CNNIC since RFC3743. Until then, the technical difficulties or international standards of “.中国”’s entry into global root domain name system were solved one by one.
In November 2006, Microsoft realized the direct support on Chinese domain names in IE7 Browser and VISTA, the latest operating system, which were officially introduced.
In 2008, When Microsoft just introduced IE8 (Testing Version), it indicated that IE8 had completed the barrier-free supporting of Chinese domain names.
In June 2008, at the annual conference of ICANN held in Paris, the board of ICANN passed by voting “permission to use other languages including Chinese as the characters of internet top-level domain characters” for the first time, which officially inaugurated the international application for “.中国” domain names.
On July 16, 2008, faced with the approaching “.中国” Age, in order to help users to actively response, “Move towards the World: China Domain Names’ Global Upgrading Activities” was officially initiated in Beijing by CNNIC so to assist users to succeed in upgrading towards “.中国” times. The upgrading activities mainly include: When “.中国” domain name s enter into the global root domain name system, all registered users of “Chinese.CN” domain names will obtain the relevant “Chinese.中国” domain names and there is no need for users to make additional application for registration. After the entry, All “Chinese.中国” domain names that are automatically obtained will be fully upgraded into the registration bank of global root domain name system “China domain names” so to contribute to the access to the internet around the world.
On September 3, 2008, “Google Chrome” Browser, following the latest Browsers like IE8, Firefox3.0, Safari3.1, adopted the international standards of Chinese domain names and realized the barrier-free supporting of Chinese domain names.
On October 30, 2009, at the 36th ICANN Conference closed in Korea, ICANN Passed by voting Implementation Plan on Channel Express of Suffix for Non-English Domain Names like “.中国”. This means that the greatest revolution since the birth of internet, “International internet domain system is opened to several languages including Chinese” takes a fundamental step forward and the international application and global deployment of Non-English domain names represented by “.中国” will officially enter into the “express”.
On November 16, 2009, the initiation ceremony for international application of “.中国” domain names was held in Beijing by CNNIC. Witnessed and supported by many representatives of renowned internet enterprises in China such as Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, Alipay, Firefox, OPERA, Maxthon, Xinhuanet.com, People.com, Sina.com and Tencent.com, CNNIC, on behalf of China, officially submitted an international application for “.中国” domain names to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
On April 23, 2010, ICANN officially declared that “.China” had passed the policy evaluation of channel express and entered into the stage of technical implementation.
On June 25, 2010, at the 38th annual meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held in Brussels, ICANN officially announced that the international application for “.中国” domain names had been officially approved and “.中国”, as a Chinese top-level domain, will be officially included in the root domain name system of internet in the globe.
CNNIC
JUL 16th,2010
