The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) www.cnnic.net.cn is proposing that restrictions be lifted allowing individual Chinese netizens to register their own .cn domain names.

According to CNNIC, although there are now more than 300,000 .cn domain names in existence, this number is greatly exceeded by .com domain names. These are available for individual use but they carry the disadvantage of being controlled by foreign institutions. To facilitate better control over domain names and security of information, CNNIC is now actively proposing an end to the restrictions preventing individual registration of .cn domain names.

Background to .cn domain names

It was back on November 28, 1990, when Qian Tianbai first registered the .cn domain name with the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) on behalf of China. As an interim measure the new .cn domain was temporarily administered by a German university as China was not fully linked to the Internet at that time. However .cn is a national symbol and there are issues of sovereignty, strategy and security.

China finally got full Internet access on April 20, 1994. Recognizing the strategic significance of the .cn domain names, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Hu Qiheng together with engineers Qian Hualin and Qian Tianbai, and assisted by Professor Werner Zorn, applied to InterNIC to move the .cn domain name server from Germany to China.

It took just a month after China was fully linked up to the Internet to locate the .cn domain name severs in China. The early days of having to rely on a foreign server were now over.

When the .cn domain name server was relocated to China on May 21, 1994, it marked a significant milestone because the domain represents China to Internet users. On that same day, the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC, CAS) finished the work of configuring the .cn domain name server and assumed the role of administering registration on .cn together with responsibility for maintaining the domain. These responsibilities were further formalized on June 2, 1997 when the State Council Informatization Office announced the establishment of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) under the auspices of CNIC, CAS to take over the role.

Internet pioneer, Professor Qian Hualin, said, "At first there were just a few .cn domain names when we moved the server from Germany to China. Even by June 1997, when the State Council Informatization Office authorized us to manage the .cn domain names, there were barely 1,010. Today, more than 300,000 .cn domain names have been registered."

Although the .cn domain has certainly developed considerably, it is very necessary to take cognizance of the big disparity between the number of .cn domain names and .com domain names.

Many of China's netizens would like to register .cn domain names but current policy does not permit this. Consequently many individual Chinese Internet users find themselves pushed into using .com names, which are controlled by foreign institutions.

In order to strengthen control over the use of domain names and security of information, CNNIC is now actively proposing that these restrictions be dropped so allowing individuals to have .cn domain names.

(China.org.cn by Wang Sining, June 13, 2004)