The China Internet Network Information Center announced that the top-level Chinese domain name .zhongguo written in Chinese characters has been approved by the board of the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit corporation that oversees Internet addresses.

Domain names with the suffix .zhongguo in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters are ready for use.

Internet users can now also visit the Shanghai World Expo's website expo2010.cn using the Chinese characters for shanghaishibohui.zhongguo.

More than 90 percent of Chinese ministries and provincial departments and at least 95 percent of the nation's news portals have already registered their .zhongguo domain names.

(Source: China Daily)