Vice Minister Xi Guohua of the Ministry of Information Industry signed a cooperation memorandom with US Verisign Company on Feburary 19 under which a mirror server of the domain name root server will be established in China to speed up the process of accessing the Internet and enhancing network safety.

The main reason for the move taking place at this time, however, is the dramatic increase of Internet users in the country each year.

Currently, there are totally 13 domain name root servers in the world, but most of them are located in the American and European continents. All of these servers are managed by ICANN, an institute authorized by the US government to service global internet root domain servers, domain name systems, and IP addresses. The operation of any server can only take place after an MOU has been reached with the US Commercial Department.