China and Global Internet Governance
183
activities and sit on its Governmental Advisory Commmittee (GAC). ICANN did not
observe the protocols regarding the name affi xed to Taiwan and used various other
means of treating it as an independent state. Thus, after some early engagement with
ICANN, China ceased sending representatives to its meetings in 2001.
During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) from 2002 to 2005,
China joined in the attack on ICANN. It made clear its support for a takeover of its
functions by an intergovernmental institution such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Adding to these tensions, members of the Chinese-language
technical community (not all of whom lived in or were citizens of the PRC) were also
frustrated with the slow development of new technical standards enabling the DNS
to represent Chinese and other non-Roman scripts. Internationalized Domain Names
(IDNs) represented not only a business and political opportunity for the Chinese, but
a potential threat as well. U.S. companies such as VeriSign were licensing IDN technology and could use it to enter the Chinese market. The market for registration of
Chinese-language domain names is potentially a very large one. If the Chinese government and its favored state enterprises were not in control of the standards for representing Chinese characters in the DNS and if they had no direct participation in the
policy processes within ICANN for adding top-level domain names (TLDs) to the DNS
root, this opportunity might be threatened.
During the ICANN-China freeze period, China mounted a challenge to ICANN that
was less visible but far more radical and signifi cant than the conference diplomacy of
WSIS. It created what was, in effect, an alternate DNS root for Chinese-character
domain names. China ’ s national alternative to ICANN ’ s global DNS root used the same
technical approach pioneered by competing root operator New.Net to ensure that the
new domains were globally compatible.
10 Chinese characters would appear as top-level
domains inside China. If one of these Chinese-character domains was queried from
outside China, the uniquely Chinese names would be rendered compatible with the
global Internet by having the name servers add the globally recognized ICANN country
code top-level domain, .cn, to the end of them. China created three new top-level
domains in this fashion: Zhong guo, Gong si, and Wang luo. These additions were
done some time in 2003 but were not widely publicized, and if inquiries were made,
they were downplayed as “ experimental ” by the Chinese. In 2006, however, as ICANN
began to develop new policies for the addition of top-level domains, the online version
of People ’ s Daily openly acknowledged the existence of these new domains and claimed
that “ [Chinese] Internet users don ’ t have to surf the Web via the servers under the
management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
of the United States. ”
11
Due to these preemptive moves, and because of China ’ s realization after WSIS that
ICANN was not going to go away, China and ICANN reached a mutual accommodation sometime in 2009. At the June 2009 ICANN meeting, the PRC offi cially returned
183
activities and sit on its Governmental Advisory Commmittee (GAC). ICANN did not
observe the protocols regarding the name affi xed to Taiwan and used various other
means of treating it as an independent state. Thus, after some early engagement with
ICANN, China ceased sending representatives to its meetings in 2001.
During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) from 2002 to 2005,
China joined in the attack on ICANN. It made clear its support for a takeover of its
functions by an intergovernmental institution such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Adding to these tensions, members of the Chinese-language
technical community (not all of whom lived in or were citizens of the PRC) were also
frustrated with the slow development of new technical standards enabling the DNS
to represent Chinese and other non-Roman scripts. Internationalized Domain Names
(IDNs) represented not only a business and political opportunity for the Chinese, but
a potential threat as well. U.S. companies such as VeriSign were licensing IDN technology and could use it to enter the Chinese market. The market for registration of
Chinese-language domain names is potentially a very large one. If the Chinese government and its favored state enterprises were not in control of the standards for representing Chinese characters in the DNS and if they had no direct participation in the
policy processes within ICANN for adding top-level domain names (TLDs) to the DNS
root, this opportunity might be threatened.
During the ICANN-China freeze period, China mounted a challenge to ICANN that
was less visible but far more radical and signifi cant than the conference diplomacy of
WSIS. It created what was, in effect, an alternate DNS root for Chinese-character
domain names. China ’ s national alternative to ICANN ’ s global DNS root used the same
technical approach pioneered by competing root operator New.Net to ensure that the
new domains were globally compatible.
10 Chinese characters would appear as top-level
domains inside China. If one of these Chinese-character domains was queried from
outside China, the uniquely Chinese names would be rendered compatible with the
global Internet by having the name servers add the globally recognized ICANN country
code top-level domain, .cn, to the end of them. China created three new top-level
domains in this fashion: Zhong guo, Gong si, and Wang luo. These additions were
done some time in 2003 but were not widely publicized, and if inquiries were made,
they were downplayed as “ experimental ” by the Chinese. In 2006, however, as ICANN
began to develop new policies for the addition of top-level domains, the online version
of People ’ s Daily openly acknowledged the existence of these new domains and claimed
that “ [Chinese] Internet users don ’ t have to surf the Web via the servers under the
management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
of the United States. ”
11
Due to these preemptive moves, and because of China ’ s realization after WSIS that
ICANN was not going to go away, China and ICANN reached a mutual accommodation sometime in 2009. At the June 2009 ICANN meeting, the PRC offi cially returned