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| April 27, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|  | China THE MIDDLE KINGDOM Watching for domain chance By Bradley Martin Depending on which Xinhua story you read this month, the problem with Chinese companies is that (a) too many of them don't take care to protect their Internet domain names, or (b) that too many of them do little but register domain names preemptively, establishing ''ghost'' e-business sites to await investors. The first point of view comes through in a story from the official news agency that says more than 90 of the top 100 Chinese companies (it doesn't say whether the ranking is by sales or what) have neglected to register domain names in pinyin, the official romanization system. Out of the 20 most popular Chinese brand names, 15 lack pinyin domain registrations. Even the companies that did register their names not just in Chinese characters but in pinyin tended to eschew the American/international dot-com form and register solely in the local form, with .ch for China at the end, the story says, quoting Hu Haidi, vice-president of 3271.com, an online domain-name registration service. Companies thus have left themselves wide open for squatters to grab extremely valuable names and register them. Such maneuvers have been ''rampant'', the story says. Chinese Internet users, most at ease keying in the pinyin versions of the names, often end up at imposter sites when they try to locate the victimized companies' websites Squatters aside, reporter/commentator Li Jialu says in another article (this one released by Xinhua's domestic service, in Chinese only) that what may look on paper like a huge expansion of electronic commerce represents to a considerable extent ''ghost sites'', on which new businesses are advertised but not yet operating. ''Currently the number of elecronic business websites in China has grown from 100 at the beginning of 1999 to almost 300,'' Li notes. But the reporter learned that quite a few of the new entries have not gone beyond registering their names and putting up online notices of what they plan. Companies are ''taking the path of 'registration - short-term speculation - sale' to earn exorbitant profits'', he complains. Some companies, Li adds, ''blindly and indiscriminately copied the mode used in developed countries, came up with a variety of electronic business models and produced even more risk investment funds, with all of them bragging about being the 'first' and the 'biggest'.'' The Western models they ape are unrelated to the reality of China's market conditions, and those companies are building ''castles in the air'', Li says dismissively. Is the writer beginning to sound a little like a bubble-bursting Greenspan wannabe, writing at a time when promoters of Chinese Internet portals still hope to make killings listing on the Nasdaq? There is some evidence toward the end of the article that Li is indeed pushing an official line. That comes when the piece praises the Chinese netpreneurs who are doing things right. Besides exhibiting realism and professionalism, ''those men of insight have . . . coordinated with relevant departments to actively promote such projects as hooking up to the Internet by enterprises and families''. Note that bit about coordinating with ''relevant department''. We don't want this new economy thing to spiral out of the government's control, now do we? (Special to Asia Times Online) | |||||||||
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