Beijing says the US Government has no right to authorise any firm to manage domain names that contain Chinese characters because 97 percent of Chinese-language users live in mainland China and Taiwan.
Hu Qiheng, director of the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC)'s working committee, said Beijing had lodged a complaint with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) over the registration of Chinese domain names.
Organisations that wanted to promote Chinese domain name services in mainland China should first get the approval of Beijing, Mr Hu told China News Service.
Chinese domain names had special cultural and historical meanings and were very different from the complete English domain names, he said, adding that China should participate in establishing international standards for Chinese domain names.
"Personally, I think we have all the reasons to succeed [in the dispute]," said Mr Hu, who is also vice-chairman of China's Science and Technology Association.
Mr Hu's criticism is latest salvo in an ongoing row between Beijing and Network Solutions over NSI promotion of its Chinese domain name registration service.
Earlier, CNNIC, China's top Internet regulatory body, accused NSI of encroaching on China's sovereignty. The Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CDNC), which was jointly established by Internet information centers in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, backed CNNIC's view, saying that the NSI's promotion of the service was "misleading".
NSI, the world's largest domain name registration firm, had planned to start the Chinese domain name registration service at the end of last month but delayed the launch. It has not announced a new date for the launch.
Users may apply for Chinese domain names ending with .cn and Chinese characters meaning China, company and Net through nine authorised registration agencies.
All the 80,000 Chinese domain names already registered would be transferred automatically to the new system, which was highly compatible with the English domain name system, CNNIC said. Users would be able to use Chinese domain names to visit the related Web sites.
The Ministry of Information Industry is also busy drafting regulations to protect Chinese domain names and will be published soon.
