More than 450,000 registration applications of Internet domain names with Chinese characters had been received by noon of November 8, officials from China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) said.
Registration began at 9 pm on Tuesday (November 7) and within one hour the CNNIC had received 60,000 applications.
Wu Yangyi, an official with the CNNIC, said the number of applications would surpass the actual number of registrations, because different organizations may apply for the same Chinese domain name.
As the only organization to administer domain names in China, the CNNIC has authorized nine companies including China Telecom and Beijing Chuanglian Communication Networks Co. to handle the issue.
According to Wu, applicants will still have to wait one month before they can include their Chinese domain name in the address bar because that is the quickest time the Internet will be able to deal with the changes. The US-based top domain name registration agent, the Network Solution Inc (NSI), also declared it will accept the registration of Chinese domain names from tomorrow, with the words to the right of the dot remaining in English, such as ".com", ".net" and ".org."
Chen Ping, an official with the domain registrar Beijing Chuanglian Communication, said people's reaction to the Chinese domain name registration has been great, but he refused to reveal the exact numbers expected to register.
Chen said more individuals are expected to register with the NSI, because they were not allowed according to Chinese regulations to register with the CNNIC.
But Wu Yangyi said the regulation is being revised, and individual users will be able to register with the CNNIC early next year.
Disputes on the CNNIC's domain names will now be solved domestically.
But Zhu Changyong, Chuanglian's deputy general manager, argued that one should not necessarily think it unfair if international agencies judge domain name disputes.
Chinese enterprises should firstly use English domain names to communicate with the world, Zhu added.
Applicants' reactions were also complicated.
Wei Zichuan, an official from Xinhua Agency's website, said the agency has registered dozens of Chinese domain names to avoid their name being registered by others.
"But obviously, we cannot register every single domain name," Wei said.
(China Daily 11/09/2000)
