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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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The country code top-level domain .tw of Taiwan is managed by the Taiwan Network Information
Center (TWNIC) with about 50,000 registered domain names. 14 TWNIC is also a member of
ICANN's Country Names Supporting Organization and stresses its independent status. As noted
above, the government of Taiwan is also a full member of ICANN's Government Advisory
Committee, a status that is not accepted by the People's Republic of China. Regardless of the
political controversy over Taiwan, there is a businesslike relationship between the Chinese and
Taiwanese Network Information Centers on the working level, particularly on technical issues.
Chinese individuals and institutions may also register domain names under a generic top level
domain such as .com, .net, .org or .info. But the popularity of such registration is shrinking.
Domain name registration under .com still enjoys a high growth rate. Compared to registrations
under .cn, the .com domain, managed by the US company VeriSign, is losing ground. In 2005,
about 40 per cent of all domain names in China were registered unde .com. By the end of 2007
this had fallen to 20 per cent. Nevertheless, there are 2.4 million domain name registrations under
.com in China. The domain .net is the third strongest Internet domain in China with a market
share of 3.3 per cent - a total of 390,000 domain name registrations. Others like .org or .info have
no more than 1.1 per cent market share or slightly more than 100,000 registrations. 15 In March
2006, the Network Information Center started to register domain names under .com and .net with
Chinese characters but without the involvement of VeriSign.
Economy
Until the late 1990s, there was no such thing as a domain name market or an Internet economy in
China. Only a limited number of academics from technical research institutions had access to the
Internet. Today, China is a rapidly growing market for the local and global Internet economy. With
more than 200 million Internet users in China's mainland, not only domain name registration but
all kinds of online applications and services offer untold business opportunities.
The primary domain name market had a growth rate of 190.4 per cent in 2007. That growth is
bound to continue after full introduction of domain names with Chinese characters, known as
internationalized domain names.
Growth of domain registration is mainly driven by market needs for e-commerce and other
commercial applications and services. Yet, e-commerce is still in its infancy in China. According to
a statistical report by the Network Information Center for 2007, only 22.1 per cent of the Internet
users do shopping on line. For 2007, this represented no more than 46.4 milion yuan (or 4.2
million euros). In the United States, 71 per cent of Internet users shop online and the volume of e-
commerce is more than $5 billion. 16
Search engines, Internet service providers and on-line games
Search engines are one of the key Internet markets in China. For a number of years, the market
leader has been the national Internet search engine www.baidu.cn with a market share of 62 per
cent. 17 The second most popular, www.google.cn, has a 24 per cent market share. The remaining
14 per cent is distributed among various Chinese search engines and Chinese branches of
international portals like www.yahoo.cn or www.msn.com.cn.
The market for Internet service providers is growing fast. There are about 100, nine of which have
allocated more than a million Internet protocol addresses to customers. China Telecom with 47
million allocated IP addresses and a market share of about 30 per cent is the leader, followed by
China Netcom (25 million), CERNET (12 million) and China Tietong Corp. (7 million).