On the Chinese domain name market — An update

Chinese government releases domain name note.

I just read the “Internet and Domain Industry Note” (互联网域名产业报告) published in June this year and would like to share with you some of its highlights that may help you understand the Chinese domain market.

The note was written by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Its website at CAICT.ac.cn also publishes notes in English, but unfortunately, this particular one is in Chinese only.

Last year the global domain registration market increased by 3.7% to 371 million domains. Compare it with China’s 4.2% growth to 51 million domains. This means China is growing faster than the rest of the world. The largest markets are U.S., China, and then Germany.

When you look at country extensions, the top 3 are .tk, .cn, and .de. .Tk is an anomaly. It belongs to Tokelau in South Pacific with a population of merely 1500 but features a sizable number of registered domains that are given away for free. If .tk is removed from the list, then .cn is clearly the biggest country extension in the world.

China scores three winners on the list of top 20 global domain registrars. So, if you are looking for a domain registrar based in China, check out Aliyun (Alibaba), West.cn, and Xinnet.

Focusing on China only, the top 10 extensions are cn, com, top, 中国 (IDN .china), icu, net, wang, xyz, club, and vip in that order. .中国 (IDN .china) was launched in 2010 but is still facing issues of recognition from users and support from general applications. In 2019, there were only 2 million .中国 domains, which accounted for 4% of the Chinese domain market.

Overall, the note paints a very bright future for the Chinese domain market.