Joint efforts by international working group in formulation of the root zone label generation rules for Chinese script

From 2015 to 2020, a group of Chinese technical experts took the lead in closely cooperating with international Internet experts to have formed the Chinese Generation Panel (CGP), offering solutions to handle the rules conflict problem of Chinese characters in gTLD among China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea that had bothered worldwide Internet users. The established global cooperation mechanism and achievements made in this period were the proof of recognition on China's international cooperation capacity by external peers.

Introduction

Since ICANN opened the application of new gTLD in 2012, as there was no consensus on the rules for variants of Chinese characters among China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, all the Chinese new gTLD, including the ".政务" and ".网络", could not have their simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese versions bundled, which made it difficult to implement the basic principles that had been advocated and practiced by the Internet community using Chinese characters. In 2015, experts from Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries and regions formed an international working group named the Chinese Generation Panel (CGP), and started to conducting joint research with the Japanese Generation Panel (JGP) and Korean Generation Panel (KGP) on solutions for Chinese domain name variants. On November 6, 2020, ICANN announced the publication of the fourth version of Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (RZ-LGR), officially adding the principle of TC-SC Equivalence and most of Chinese domain rules in it. This marked a successful end to the formulation of Chinese domain name technical standards and industry norms that lasted more than 20 years.

Openness and inclusion were reflected during the process of rules development, and it had promoted the cultural exchanges and mutual learning

As one of the most ancient writing systems in the world, the Chinese characters were introduced to the Korean Peninsula from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD, and had been the dominant form of written communication until the 15th century. Chinese characters were adopted by Japan since the 5th century AD, serving as the main writing system together with hiragana and katakana. Within the greater China region, the Chinese language has two writing systems: Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Because of the same cultural inheritance, the greater China region smoothly reached an agreement on the registration principle and rules for Chinese domain names. However, the Japanese and Korean have their own historical evolution of writing systems, which led to a totally different use habits of Chinese characters in some details, causing domain name registration conflicts and security risks.

With a rapid development of the Internet, each country or region is willing to promote Internet rules that are in line with their own interests. Because of the differences in culture, thinking patterns as well as habits, China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea couldn’t reach a consensus on variant rule of some key Chinese characters for a long time. Meanwhile, the communities from these three countries also needed to respond to doubts from non-Chinese character communities in explaining the particularity of Chinese, such as the communities of Latin language and Sanskrit language. With many solutions and consensus to be made, the work of CGP lasted for nearly six years. A total of 17 versions of draft proposals had been generated after dozens of times of discussion and communication among CGP, JGP, KGP and ICANN through email, teleconference, and face-to-face meeting, specifying clear rules for 19685 Hanzi characters repertoire, 15203 variant groups, 3 groups with visual similarity, and 194 groups with multiple allocatable variants.

There are always predecessors' contributions to the road of historical development

Represented by Madam Hu Qiheng, the Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Qian Hualin and Mao Wei, the researchers of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a group of Chinese and international experts had started to study technical standards and norms of Chinese domain names from the end of last century. They united relevant organizations from Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to have founded the CDNC and successfully developed the unified rules for Traditional and Simplified Chinese domain names. After the formulation of RFC3743, they finished the RFC4713 (the Registration and Administration Recommendations for Chinese Domain Names) and Chinese IDN variant table, which laid important foundations for the ".中国" Chinese IDN ccTLD, as well as the follow-up work of Chinese gTLD. Arduous endeavors and great contributions were made by hundreds of experts at home and abroad during the process.

There are always constant efforts on the way during the process of overcoming obstacles

During the CGP's work, young experts represented by Dr. Wang Wei, the CTO of Fuxi Institution and visiting Research Fellow of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), united experts from various organizations such as the Institute of Computing Technology of CAS, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Computer Network Information Center of CAS (CNIC), ZDNS, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), as well as the graduates from CAS. Their work with other experts in the CGP had fully reflected the Internet spirit of openness and cooperation.

As one of the world's three major languages, Chinese has been officially added to the fundamental rules of Internet with the publishment of the fourth version of RZ-LGR. This has enriched the types of language in root zone, and also reflected the respect for diversity, openness, and inclusiveness of cyber culture, promoted cyber cultural exchanges and mutual learning. The rules retain the habit of using Chinese characters to the greatest extent, and take demands of communities in Japan and South Korea into account, guaranteeing communication and share among global communities who use Chinese on the basis of a unified technical standard, and facilitating interconnectivity. The rules will increase the visibility of these new gTLDs among Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan as well as other overseas Chinese communities, and promote the global development of Chinese domain name industry.