China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) awarded licenses to 8 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in the country. Neustar registry got the license for .BIZ, which, however, couldn't be called “new” in the full sense of the word – it was launched back in 2001. Uniregistry was awarded licenses to two domains – .LINK and .AUTO. However, it was Afilias registry that got the most – it was awarded licenses to as many as five gTLDs: INFO, .MOBI, .RED, .PRO and .KIM (two of them – .MOBI and .PRO are also not new, since they were launched in 2001 and 2004 respectively).
According to the law in China, citizens and companies can register names in any domain zones. However, they can create websites only in those domains that were awarded MIIT’s license. Licensing implies that, among other things, registries have to agree to follow very strict censorship rules, which are in force in China. At the moment, only 15 gTLDs that are written in Latin letters and not hieroglyphs have been awarded licenses in China. Therefore, Afilias registry could be proud that it operates a third of all these gTLDs. “China’s domain name market is already the world’s second biggest, with over 40M registrations and more consumer choice will help it grow faster”, OnlineDomain quotes Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President of Afilias.
