.com, .net or .cn?
.com and .net is popular in China too. However, we suggest to registering domain from a registrar in China. Don’t use another country’s local domain name. According to the new policy of registering ICP in Beijing, they don’t accept domain from other countries now. (e.g.: .ae is domain name of UAE. MIIT doesn’t accept application for it.)
If you registered .com or .net outside of China, it won’t be acceptable. (e.g.: we registered e-marketing-china.com on godaddy, if we submit the application in beijing, the local MIIT won’t accept our application.)
This is a new policy in beijing, it is very possible that other regional office will follow the same fule as beijing in future. So we highly recommand to registering a domain name from an a Chinese registrar.
.online, .click, .cn.com are not acceptable by MIIT. So if you want to target China audience, please don’t use these domains. Here is the list that you can choose if you can’t find a good domain that end with .com, .net, .cn
http://www.miitbeian.gov.cn/basecode/query/queryDomain.action
How to find a Chinese registrar?
You can find the full list of Chinese domain registrar from cnnic. Normally we use dnspod.cn. It is a company that belongs to tencent qq. You could find their name in above list as well. So it is 100% safe. Most of the domain registrars in the list don’t have an English website. However, The interface is quite similar to English ones. So you will get ride of it with a simple google translate. Or our Chinese domain registration service might be an option too. We will find the right domain for you, and guide you through on how to manage your domains on dnspod.cn. All the login details will be transfered to you. We have written a post to introduce how to login to dnspod and change the password.
Verify ownership for a .cn domain
.cn domain requires to veiry ownership before you could use it. CINNC doesn’t accept passport, so you have to claim it with a Chinese contact’s id. This might difficult for many foreign company. Some of our client registered .cn domain from godaddy, eNom. There is no access allow you to get it done online directly. You have to contact them in person. They all feel that the process is frustrating. In this case, please contact us, we do it for free for our ICP registration clients.