China–the other internet?

3 of the 4 new domain names announced by China’s Ministry of Information Industry yesterday, going into effect as of tomorrow (March 1).

This could be a Big Deal — the beginning of an “alternate root” — the beginning of another Internet, according to some experts.

My colleague Mike Liebhold directed me to an analysis by Michael Geist, well known Canadian Internet scholar, who notes that:

The alternate root has always lurked in the background as a possibility that would force everyone to rethink their positions since it would enable a single country (or group of countries) to effectively pack up their bags and start a new game.  The U.S. control would accordingly prove illusory since a new domain name system situated elsewhere would be subject to its own rules.  While the two could theoretically co-exist by having ISPs simply recognize both roots, the system could “break” if both roots contained identical extensions.  In other words, one root can have dot-com and other other can have dot-corp, but they can’t both have dot-com.