China's first ICANN-accredited registrar China Channel announced in Beijing on 26 September that it would be offering and promoting registration services for Chinese domain names and Chinese-addressed emailing services.
The Transformation and Emergence of Chinese Domain Names
The CTO of 3721 International Mr Zhou Hong is the founder of the concept of Chinese IP address; and is therefore the most qualified of all to speak. His choice of words is also by far the most comprehensible to the reporters.
Zhou used the analogy of taking the cab. Supposing a person needs to get somewhere by cab, he can instruct the driver to go to a particular avenue of a street; and that can be taken as domain name. The person can also choose to tell the driver the name of the company, which can be taken here as web address. People usually choose to use the later. To further explicated his point, the new CEO of 3721 International pointed to an illustration and said, Take for example American firm Coca Cola: its IP Address is 208.134.241.178, its domain name is http://www.cocacola.com and its Chinese website is "Coca Cola". If one enters "
" through a browser supported by 3721 International's Chinese domain name resolution software, 3721 International's server would make the relevant conversion: and this is the reason why some compare 3721 International as the watch tower of an 'Internet Tower'.
3721 International has given those interested in a Chinese Internet an elementary introductory course. The next in line will be China Channel in her provision of a more direct application of the Internet.
Use Chinese Domain Names, Write Chinese Email Addresses
Once, a fellow reporter joked that there are many friends who, hopeless in English, simply cannot tell the difference between ".com" and ".net" and had kept asking, "which comes first-com or cn?" These friends became firm supporters of the Chinese web address and would say at every opportune moment, "Use the 3721 International's system-you would only need to type in to Chinese characters to access sina.com-how convenient."
No matter what, even if users subscribe to 3721 International's system, they would still have to connect to the website of their choice with an English domain name. Can't we simply have domain names in Chinese characters? The answer from China Channel is yes.
For those who had been more comfortable with the Chinese language, English domain names and email addresses had been quite a chore for them to memorize by heart. An email address like 
, however, would be much better to commit to the memory of a Chinese-speaking user than zcy@sohu.com. Chief Technical Officer of China Channel quipped to reporters: your email addresses as printed on your name cards are in English, this will not make it easy for others to remember your email address as it could have been a translation of your Chinese name, a hanyu pinyin representation, or a totally arbitrary one. The mailbox you choose would very well be from 163, 263 or others. However, if your domain name and email address are both in Chinese characters, for example 
, it will grab the attention of and leave a lasting impression on your correspondent.
The Chinese email addresses come with an automatic forwarding function that can forward all email received in the Chinese mailbox to other mailboxes chosen by the user. Director of China Channel Mr Gong Shaohui said, "The advent of Chinese TLD names and addresses will eliminate the language barrier of the Internet to non-English speakers, and will revolutionalize the operations of small and medium sized companies and the propagation of emailing in China."
Using domain names in Chinese language and write email addresses in Chinese characters. To those non-English speaking users from small and medium sized enterprises, they could finally disseminate product information and increase opportunities in sales.
Interests Lie in Getting Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Online
China Channel's solution reaps much benefit: on the one hand it offers users a greater variety of languages when they compose email; on the other it directly catalyzes the process of getting small and medium-sized enterprises online.
China's July launch of "Enterprises Online 2000" project proposed getting online a total of 1 million small-sized enterprises, 10000 medium-sized enterprises and 100 large-sized enterprises. The project has since been launched for 2 months, and the figures attained so far have not been encouraging. According to reports from users, Shandong had projected a total of 100000 enterprises getting online, but two months had yielded less than 2000 firms getting online.
The real difficulty in getting online lies in the setting up of a web site, much of this evident in its slow-output, high-cost construction. By current normal standards, it will take half to one full month with millions of dollars spent to construct a professional web site. Supposing the scenario of 100 designing companies working hard at getting an average of 10 enterprises online each month, even though so Shandong's project of getting a proposed 100000 enterprises online would take at least 8 to 10 years. Without the aid of trained professionals specializing in website construction, the very idea of getting 100000 enterprises online within a year is but just a fancy dream. The various provincial governments are fretting.
To the domain name registrars and ISPs, the project would seem attractive. Jingtong Technologies and its subsidiary China Channel recently launched its 4E e-Commerce System; which seamlessly combine the real time Internationalized domain name registration system, automated virtual hosting system, a "One-Stop" website construction platform with an intelligent management platform; to offer a neat solution for domain name registrations, virtual hosting, website construction, online sales and website maintenance. Such services would greatly convenience small and middle-sized enterprises rearing to get online.
The provincial governments are beginning to hold the 4E system in high regard as it makes website construction a task so quick and easy that it can complete thousands a day. It allows for creative individualism in designing, requires no technical knowledge from the enterprises to maintain their website, supplies an online payment system and charges a low fee.
Nanjing, Wenzhou, Quanzhou and Shandong provincial governments, after having surveyed the market, have chosen China Channel's 4E system as the best solution for getting enterprises online. After signing the contract, the projected proposal of getting enterprises online ceased to be empty talk.
China Channel is thus the first winner from the project.
-- Translated Article
