Domain Name News

China re-opens it’s ccTLD domain to individual registrations.. Finally!

Posted: 29 May 2012 08:54 AM PDT

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) just announced that they have revised the rules on .cn domain name registrations. So as of today according to the latest amendment and enforcement announcement: "any individual or organization that can bear independently civil liabilities, has the right to apply for the domain registration under the implementing rules.”

According to Verisign’s latest industry brief, the .cn country code domain is currently the 7th largest ccTLD in the world. As of this writing, there are a little over 3.3 million active registrations which include .com.cn, .net.cn, .org.cn, .gov.cn, .ac.cn, .edu.cn, and chinese idn’s.

Just a few years ago, the .cn ccTLD was at one point the #1 largest country code top level domain in the world, but that was before China started halting registrations by foreign domain registrars of .cn and banning all individuals from controlling .cn domains.

Only businesses were allowed to register and/or control the domains for the past 2 years. The Chinese government believed that the stricter rules would help with fighting spam, phishing, piracy and other cyber crimes. It is unclear whether those efforts actually paid off. Qi Lin, assistant director of CNNIC said:

“Individuals will become an important drive for the development of websites… Opening the .cn domain name to individuals will boost the openness and uniqueness of the Internet. The new act will help the development of individual micro-application platforms and e-commerce as well. Individual online shops can possess their own .cn domains which will help their brand operation”

New registrations of .cn domains are available through 85 accredited registrars which can be found on NeuStar website. NeuStar has partnered with CNNIC, the registry for China's .cn country code top level domain (ccTLD), to offer .cn registrations to registrars outside of China. The registrations are available in both ASCII and Chinese language formats. Registrations are open to the general public, and may be done at both the second and third levels.