China has acquired the operation capabilities of “.中国” (“Chinese for China”) domain names, a leader at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said in Beijing recently.

Starting from 2009, “.中国” domain names will appear on the Internet, which means email addresses in Chinese, for example, “×××@×××．中国”, can be used. The previous requirement of “English only” in email registration will be eliminated.

From 2009, ICANN will permit the usage of non-English languages including Chinese as the top level domain character field on the Internet, and there will be “.中国”domain names. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN pointed out that the plan of including non-English domain name suffixes including “.中国” into the global root DNS has been set up and it will be open for application in May and June of next year.

By People’s Daily Online

source: english.people.com.cn