Shi has spent more than 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) to register nearly 200 different domain names since the end of last year, and now he waits for the returns.

"This may be an opportunity to make easy money," he insists, hoping to sell the names for a neat profit.

Recently, Shi also registered dozens of .sh domain names, such as legend.sh and fujian.sh which are supposed to mean "Legend's online shop" and "shops in Fujian Province."

No figures are available on how many others in the country are dreaming of a domain fortune, but sohu.com said its .cc suffix domain name registration business has been surprisingly popular.

"The business has brought the company more than US$1 million in revenue since April," said Dong Yanyi, marketing director of sohu.com.

However, experts warned that the real value of the newly introduced domain names remains in doubt and company executives said they are less serious about them.

Top domain names can be divided into international and regional categories. Top international domain names, such as those with the suffix .com, .net, .org and .edu, are used worldwide to represent companies, networks, organizations and education enterprises, respectively.

Regional domain name suffixes, on the other hand, represent the country or region where the Websites are located. For example, the suffix .cn is put after Chinese Websites, and .kr for South Korea.

"(In that respect) .cc, .tv and .sh are actually regional domain name suffixes," Ding Hui, sales manager of East Telecommunication Co. Ltd., a major domain name agency, said. "People should understand what the new domain names stand for before registering them," he added.

For example, .tv implies audio and video-related entertainment Websites and .sh is now used to represent "shop" or "Shanghai."

Malaysian registration company, Dotcc Co. Ltd., which is in charge of promoting domain names ending with .cc, said the suffix stands for "commercial company."

But originally, the suffix .cc belongs to Australia's Cocos Island, while .tv is used to represent Tuvalu, a small island country to the southwest of the Pacific Ocean.

Most dramatically, the owner of .sh is St. Helena Island, where French general Napoleon was imprisoned for seven years.

Since the islands did not have plans to develop their own domain name systems in the near future, some commercial companies paid the islands to use their suffixes over the next 10 years or so and introduced them to China at the end of last year.

"The domain name registration market is a little bit out of order," Ding said. "At least seven new domain name suffixes have emerged in the past six months."

Many world famous companies, such as Bsteel Co., said they have registered three to five most popular domain names to protect their brands and they are not too worried about the new ones.

(Eastday.com 05/31/2001)