Hong Kong websites to be offered Chinese character domain names

Dec 15, 2009, 11:54 GMT

Hong Kong - Thousands of Hong Kong websites look set to be offered an extra domain name with the '.hk' suffix written in Chinese characters from next year, officials confirmed Monday.

The move, which is to affect around 200,000 Hong Kong sites, follows recent changes which allow web addresses to be written entirely in non-Latin scripts such as Chinese, Russian and Japanese.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) announced in October that a technical change would allow websites to be written in non-Latin scripts from next year.

Following the announcement, the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation, which overseas Hong Kong domain registration, applied for permission to introduce the Chinese character version of its two-letter country code.

A corporation spokesman said, pending approval, the company planned to offer 'a buy one and get the other free' with the Hong Kong suffix in both scripts.

Since 2007, it has been possible to write the part of the web address to the left of the full-stop in Chinese or English. The suffix, such as .com or .org, or .hk must be in Latin script.

However, only 10,000 of the 180,000 .hk websites have chosen to register in Chinese, according to the South China Morning Post.

The application was supported by the government's Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, which said the move would strengthen Hong Kong's position as digital city.

'It will enable over a billion Chinese-speaking people to access websites of Hong Kong-related organisations using an address that is entirely in their mother-tongue,' said a government paper.