Fresh data explains the Chinese domain name market

Kassey Lee examines data regarding domain registrations and web usage in China.

The 45th China Statistical Note on Internet Development (in Chinese) has just come out. It is an notable survey since it gives us the big picture of the Chinese internet economy in general and domain market in particular.

This article is an update to what I wrote six months ago, so please refer to “Chinese domain market – the big picture” as well.

The number of internet users has increased to 904 million, but the penetration rate is 65%, so there is still room for growth.

The number of websites has been declining in the last two years, but the survey has not provided any explanation. I speculate that ecommerce sites such as Taobao and JD.com are too successful and keep a lot of sellers within their economies.

The total number of domains registered in China jumped to 51 million, which is due to the inclusion of the 10.1 million domains from fresh extensions (released in 2014 and later) for the first time.

.Com grew by 16.4%, making it the fastest-growing traditional extension in China.

.Cn was not too bad, up by 5.7%,

.中国 (China IDN) is on the downward trend.

.Net is down.

.Org is back to its 2013 level.

.Info’s future is not so great.

.Biz needs rescue.

Overall, .com and .cn are the winners, and fresh extensions have become significant enough to be included in the survey.

Here are additional highlights from the note.

• There are now 710 million online shoppers, and the use of mobile payments is widespread. Retail sales last year amounted to 10.6 trillion yuan, indicating a massive digital economy in China.
• Online education users doubled to 423 million and will grow tremendously since of the lingering effect of Covid-19.
• Among the Top 30 global internet firms in 2019, the US took away 18 firms and China managed to get 9, indicating the importance of both the US and China in the global internet economy.
• The number of Chinese unicorns increased by 74 to reach 187 startups, which is an excellent source of buyers of expensive domains.
• The Chinese government has disclosed placing blockchain at the core of innovation, so there ought to be a lot of interest in blockchain-related domains from China.