Why should I get a Chinese domain: .cn /.com.cn?

If you are reading this newsletter, you already know how quickly the overall market is growing in China, but did you know that the Chinese internet market is catching up with the US in terms of total users?  In 2005 there were an estimated 87 million people online in China and in 2006 the CNIIC (Chinese Internet Network Information Centre) estimated that this number had grown to 137 million people!!  JP Morgan has recently forecasted that China will have over 190 million users by 2010, just behind the US's current 210 million (although the US numbers are not likely to grow much more since there is only 300 million people in the country).

Any key restrictions during registration?

There are some key restrictions regarding the content and intent of the domain to be registered, and any of the following contents/intentions may not be included in any website registered and used by any organization or individual.  Here states clearly the violations of the regulations. 

Domains which:

• 1. are against the basic principles prescribed in the Constitution;
• 2. jeopardize national security, leak state secrets, intend to overturn the government, or disrupt of state integrity;
• 3. are harmful to national honor and national interests;
• 4. instigate hostility or discrimination between different nationalities, or disrupt the national solidarity;
• 5. violate the state religion policies or propagate cult and feudal superstition;
• 6. spread rumors, disturb public order or disrupt social stability;
• 7. spread pornography, obscenity, gambling, violence, homicide, terror or instigate crimes;
• 8. insult, libel against others and infringe other people's legal rights and interests; 
• 9. contain other contents prohibited by laws, rules and administrative regulations.

How to choose my domain name?

1. Choose something relevant to your business or market, and general terms - for example, car, house, phone, etc. – can be effective from a search engine point of view. Also, acronyms or pinyin can be good, such as "PC" or "shouji". The difficulty is that you need to act fast to grab these kinds of domains. Right now, most are already gone, but be creative!

2. Short names. For now, all domains with less than 3 characters are registered. The reason behind this is short names are easy for visitors to remember and come back. It is valuable to a site. A guy had registered a domain cq.cn in 1999 for his own use. In 2005, this domain was sold for 200K RMB, simply because C.Q. happens to stands for one of the biggest Chinese city name "Chong Qing".

3. Famous brand names are pricey and well-protected. For example, Google paid big bucks to get the domains google.cn and google.com.cn. Many world-famous brand names with a ".cn" extension have already been registered. Though this could be a possible way to get rich, the brand's owner has a very good chance to win a case in the court to own the domain name. So, if you go this route, you must be prepared to fight in the court.

Where do I get my Chinese domain?

Since 2003, any business or organization in the world, regardless of location, can register a .cn or .com.cn domain name under the policy governed by the Ministry of Information.
No individual (if you have your own business, for example) can register the top level .cn domain directly. However, the government allows proxy registration so that an organization can register on your behalf.  This is usually the registration service that you buy the domain name from.