I'm pretty sure I didn't come up with that idea myself, though I don't remember where I got it from. It was obviously possible. And in addition to TLDs it would be a simple enough matter for China to publish a variant protocol to http, just as RSS aficionados have pushed "feed://" as a standard. That could also be done with Chinese glyphs.

The post Mike references was quoted in WIRED the month it appeared, and its eerie prescience is now evident. So it looks like I just became an important thinker on Pacific-rim internet domain issues. W00t.

What no one has mentioned is that if these new Chinese-only TLDs are successful, the PRC will eventually be able to shut off direct access to Roman-character TLD nameservers.

Note to media: I am available for TV on-air opportunities and radio interviews.

Note to Mike: I don't bluff.

I wonder if Sterling's objections to the Chinese government's interventions on the Internet have been tempered at all during the past year. Surely it’s clear today that a government has some rights to intervene in the private communications of its citizens. For example, the US wiretaps suspected terrorists. For domestic security reasons, the Chinese have limited some freedoms. While their perception of the proper boundary between private and public may be different than that of the US, the boundary is dynamic, depending on the political environment and state needs. It has moved considerably in the US recently.
If the role of the state is to promote the general welfare of its citizens, the Chinese government has done well over the past twenty years, radically improving GDP per capita and providing superb infrastructure for future development. If the international Internet infrastructure provided by ICANN isn't meeting their needs, they have just demonstrated that they have both market critical mass and the political will to effect changes to that infrastructure. When China overtakes the US as the world's largest economy in about ten years, the US may find itself making changing to the accepted (Chinese-specified) global infrastructure to suit the US’s needs. We would hope the Chinese would appreciate those local needs, rather than mock our lack of mathematical abilities.

Foreign Observer might be dismayed to learn that Bush's eavesdropping on Al Qaeda is far less invasive than what most (all?) Western European countries do for internal security. To quote from Tom Wolfe, "Fascism is forever descending on America- but it always seems to land in Europe."

I have no objection to the PRC GDP cresting above the USA GDP - the PRC has about four times the population, after all - but I doubt that it will ever happen. India is far more likely to take on the mantle of world's largest economy in our lifetimes.

Standards and practices are what they are because they work, not because they're Chinese or American. Various elites and authoritarians around the world want to hobble the internet because it works too well. Lucky for y'all, the U.S. of A. isn't going to let that happen.