Houston Community News >> New Domain Names in China
9/28/2007 The internet was
created during the 60’s and originally called the ARPANET. Once a uniform and
standard addressing system was implemented on the already existing
communications network, it became the Internet in the 70’s. The first time
anyone tried to use the Internet, which was on October 29 1969, it crashed.
The making of what we today call the Internet was created by collaboration
between several universities, primarily in the US. I was myself involved during
my university days, with a modem the size of an ordinary suitcase. Then later,
the military plugged in, as they realized they had a potentially stable
communications system that because of it mesh structure could survive even a
nuclear attach. It would be virtually impossible for an enemy to nock out every
link and node.
Domain names, addressing and content was based entirely on the western alphabet
and the already long established ASCII code, which nearly every computer still
uses today. Then Asian countries wanted to use their writing systems as well. In
the western writing we get away with using less than 100 characters to
communicate, but to produce and read a news paper in Japanese for instance, you
need nearly 2,000 characters, and a new system was invented to display Asian
characters.
The addressing and programming system has remained in western writing to this
day, but now the Chinese have announced that they will release a domain name
system that uses Chinese characters in late October this year.
It will be a universally applicable domain name system in Chinese and will be
available all over the world. Chinese is already the largest and most used
writing system in the world. Having domain names in real Chinese, not just
Romanized Chinese, can help get rid of the language barriers for the Chinese
people in the world to access to the net and can also help Chinese enterprises
to build up e-commerce platforms specially designed for Chinese located anywhere
in the world.
Chinese characters are distinct and immutable, while their Romanisation can have
many meanings. For instance the Chinese word “ping” can translate into over 26
characters and the word “tang” 49 characters, all with a different meaning.
Which is the meaning the writer intends when writing Romanized? Sometimes you
can guess from the content, but far from always.
If you write ChongQing, most people would immediately associate that with the 40
million people city in western China, but in fact Chong can be represented by 23
standard characters and Qing (pronounced ching) can be represented by 41
characters. In theory, the name Chongqing can be translated into some 1,127
place names, add variations in local languages. Written in Chinese there would
be no room for misunderstanding.
The flipside of the new Chinese domain name system may prove to be a repeat of
the upheavals with cyber squatters. People and firms who illegally register
another firms name as a domain, and then ask for inflated prices to hand it
over, or use it for devious purposes. Except for somewhat fluffy copyright laws,
there are still no laws regulating this activity.
Some western companies have also been attempting to create their exclusive world
rights to a particular name, for instance British Harrods. Would that mean that
nobody else in the world with the family name Harrods would be allowed to use it
in their business name? Harrods and a few others seems to think that way.
In China there are a few thousand names approved for use as family names, among
1.32 billion people. There are more than 95 million Wang (King), and 90 million
Zhang (Plum) for instance.
We guess it is a case of “watch this space”. China is aiming to explore the
moon, set up its own GPS satellite system, and it has already adapted its own
mobile phone system, and it has been rumors that they are planning their own
Internet as well. The good thing is that the new Chinese systems are compatible
with the existing western, and that their existence seems to break the present
US control of the technology and its use.
Bert felt is a Kiwi living in Chongqing in western China. He is CEO of a local consulting and service company Merkina Ltd. Merkina’s website www.merkina.com provides free information on doing business in China