China Dismisses Concerns over New Draft Rule will Make “Foreign Websites Impossible to Reach”

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology dismisses recent worries on foreign media that a new draft rule decreed by the institution would block access to foreign websites.

“The media has misunderstanding towards certain term of the draft rule. There is no fundamental conflict between the new draft and the global domain name regulation system,” said the ministry, adding that foreign cooperation’s’ work in China will not be affected.

The draft regulation on Internet domain names was issued last week by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information and is now soliciting public opinion online for the time being. The controversy mainly lies in Article 37, which can be translated as following:

“Domain names engaging in network access within the borders shall have services provided by domestic domain name registration service bodies, and domestic domain name registration management bodies shall carry out operational management.

“For domain names engaging in network access within the borders, but which are not managed by domestic domain name registration service bodies, Internet access service providers may not provide network access services.”

The media, especially the foreign ones, interpreted this article as an effort to completely block foreign websites from China. However, the rules “do not involve websites that are accessed overseas,” said Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.