CNNIC, which manages the China's ccTLD .CN, has published the English version of its report for the first half of last year. According to the Domain Incite, the document fixes a sharp decrease in the number of registrations in the national domain zone of China. If at the end of 2021 there were 20,410,139 names in .CN, then by the end of June 2022 the number had decreased to 17,861,269. It is noteworthy that the Verisign report for the second quarter of last year estimated the number of registrations in the .CN domain zone at 20, 6 million. Most likely, such a serious difference is due to the fact that CNNIC provides data on registrants who are residents of the China or legal entities registered in China.
The number of domain names owned by Chinese registrants in the .COM domain zone has also significantly decreased by more than half a million. As of the end of 2021, it was estimated by CNNIC at 10,649,851 domains, and as of the end of June 2022, at 10,093,729. On the other hand, Chinese registrants have begun to show noticeably more serious interest in new generic top-level domains. A year ago, the number of registrations of Chinese individuals and legal entities in new domain zones was 3,615,751. And in six months it grew by almost a million and reached 4,590,705. According to CNNIC, new domains now account for about 13.6% of all domain names, registered in China.