Chinese-character domain names to benefit on-line community

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-09 15:10

The Chinese government has been promoting Internet domain names in Chinese characters. The State Council and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued several regulations that stipulate the websites of government departments should be addressed with the suffix ".cn" for a possible transformation into a system in Chinese characters.

Zhang Jian, an expert with the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), said the future Internet address system would become multilingual, with the use of both Latin and non-Latin characters.

"But a multilingual address system is only the first step toward a more international Internet that reflects cultural diversity," Zhang said.

Internet addresses, or domain names that end in ".com" and other suffixes, are the key monikers behind every website and e-mail address.

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen.

Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

Prof. Men Honghua, a researcher with the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the exclusive use of Latin characters reflected Western cultural dominance.

Zhang said the dominance started at the creation of the Internet by the Americans, when the needs of non-Latin language users were ignored in almost all the Internet protocols and rules.

With the world's largest Internet population, 360 million by the end of June, China welcomed the move towards a multilingual address system, he said.

According to the CNNIC, 12.96 million domain names with suffix of ".cn" were registered by Chinese Internet users as of the end of June.

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