ICANN Approves Chinese IDN: DOT 中国
Published June 28, 2010 | 
“ICANN Approves Chinese Internationalized Domain Names
Brussels, Belgium 25 June 200
Millions of Chinese language users will soon be able to access the Internet using Chinese script following a decision today by ICANN’s Board of Directors to approve a set of Chinese language internationalized domain names.
“This approval is a significant change for Chinese language users worldwide,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. “One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.” The new IDN country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and the associated organizations approved by the Board are:
- CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center)
- HKIRC (Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited)
- TWNIC (Taiwan Network Information Center).
From ICANN’s ccTLD Fast Track String Evaluation Completion page these will be the extensions that go live.
- IDN.香港 (Hong Kong)
- IDN.中国 (China Simplified Chinese)
- IDN.中國 (China Traditional Chinese)
- IDN. 台灣 (Taiwan Simplified Chinese)
- IDN. 台湾 (Taiwan Traditional Chinese)
Another interesting development out of ICANN was the development of BNames and a synchronized variant table. So if 投资.中国 (Investment.China, Simplified Chinese) is registered and an end user types in 投资.中國 (Investment.China, Traditional Chinese) they will automatically be sent to 投资.中国. Note that 投资.中國 (Investment.China, Traditional Chinese) will not be available to be registered since 投资.中国 (Investment.China, Simplified Chinese) was registered first.
Please note that the approved Chinese IDNs were ccTLDs and that the same methodology can be used to facilitate the implementation of GTLDs.
