Although the following looks like a localization issue on the face of it, it could potentially become a powerful user lock-in and thus a very effective addition to the Great Internet Wall of China:
China-Government Approved Chinese character Internet domain names, widely usable in China, available for registration
General, i-DNS.net International, 1 March 2005 -- Singapore, 01 March 2005
i-DNS.net International Pte. Ltd., the Singapore-based company that pioneered the concept and technology behind multilingual domain names, also known as Internationalised Domain Names (IDN), in an exclusive partnership with CNNIC, the Chinese Internet Agency responsible for Domain Names and with the approval of the Ministry of Information Industry of the People's Republic of China (MII, http://www.mii.gov.cn/mii/zcfg%5Cgonggao20021122.html), announces the availability of Internet domains completely in Chinese characters. The domain names are available under the top-level Simplified Chinese character extensions ".¹«Ë¾" (i.e. ".gongsi" which means "company" in Chinese) and/or ".ÍøÂç" (i.e. ".wangluo" which means "networking") where the "dot" character can be typed in either English (ASCII) or Chinese. MII has endorsed these Chinese domain names at the Domain Name Management Policy announcement.
http://www.i-dns.net/newsroom/news/GE050301-01.html