China began accepting applications from individuals for .cn and .中国”, the Chinese internationalised domain name, on Tuesday the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said.

Any individual or organisation that can carry independent civil liabilities has the right to apply for the domain registration under the implementing rules,” said CNNIC.

CNNIC, the registry for .CN, stopped individuals applying for .CN domain names in December 2009 due to what they said was because a large number of domains were being used to distribute illegal material such as pornography and gambling sites. To combat this, the Ministry of Public Security launched a series of public campaigns targeting cybercrimes.

The new act will help the development of individual micro-application platforms and e-commerce as well. Individual online shops can possess their own .cn domains which will help their brand operation, Qi Lin, vice-director of CNNIC, told Xinhua News.

“Individuals will become the major drive for the development of websites in China,” said Qi. “Reopening the domain name registration right to individuals is expected to boost the openness and uniqueness of the Internet.”

There were around 2.3 million .CN domain names at the end of 2011, up 20 per cent year-on-year, according to CNNIC’s most recent statistics. The ccTLD is also the seventh largest in the world, behind .DE (Germany) with 15.1 million registrations, the world’s largest, .UK (United Kingdom – 10.1m), .TK (Tokelau), .NL (Netherlands – 4.95m), .RU (Russia – 3.85m), and .EU (European Union – 3.6m).

To register your domain name, check out Europe Registry here.