.HK Registrar Offering Temporary Chinese-Language Domain Name Registrations

According to the July 24, 2005 issue of Managing Intellectual Property, the registrar for the .hk domain, is running a Chinese domain name trial until December 29 this year, and plans to launch the service properly next year.

"CDN" domain name registartions from Hong Kong Domain Name Registration must include at least one Chinese character, either traditional or simplified, and can also contain Roman characters. Anyone can apply for a Chinese character .hk domain during the trial period, and there is no charge. But all registrations will be deleted on December 29.

Unfortunately, so-called "internationalized domain names" still lack formal rules from ICANN.