.Org in China

Chinese non-profits spurn .org for alternatives.

In my series of articles to studying the Chinese domain market, I have already covered the big picture, .cn, .com, and .net. Today, let’s look at .org. This analysis is based on data I have collected from China Internet Network Information Center reports published since 1997.

The chart shows a breakdown of domains registered in China as of December, 2018. As you can see, .org accounts for a tiny 0.5% or 200,000 domains. While .cn and .com are considered mainstream extensions, .org is insignificant in China.

The chart shows a continuous decline in .org growth over the last few years. The decline is substantial — from 398,000 in 2015 down to only 200,000 in 2018. The surge in 2015 might have been a result of the “Chips” boom centered around .com but spreading to other extensions, and the downward trend may be caused by organizations simply choosing .cn to build their internet presence.

Early this year Baidu published a list of the top 10 non-profit organizations on entrepreneurship (中国十大公益创业组织名单), so I decided to use the list for this study. Below is the result.

Rank	Chinese	English	Domain
1	YBC中国国际青年创业计划	Youth Business China	YBC.cye.com.cn
2	KAB创业教育	Know About Business	KAB.org.cn
3	AAMA亚杰商会	AAMA China	AAMAchina.com.cn
4	BCF北京光华慈善基金会	Guanghua Charity Foundation	BCF.org.cn
5	SOE中国青年创业探索	Spirit Of Enterprise	SOE.org.cn
6	中国光华科技基金会	China Guanghua Foundation	GHSTF.org.cn
7	SYB创业培训	Start Your Business	NYJY.cn
8	JA青年成就中国	Junior Achievement China	JAchina.org
9	NPI 公益创投	NPI	NPI.org.cn
10	NPP公益创投	NPP	(not found)

As you can see, the majority of the organizations in the list prefer .cn. In fact, if they want to emphasize the non-profit nature, they can simply use a sub domain on .org.cn. Also, many of these organizations are local in nature.

Therefore, the motivation for Chinese non-profit organizations to adopt .org is not large because they can choose .cn or even .org.cn to accomplish the same purpose.