[ALAC-Announce] ICANN Announces Establishment of Beijing Engagement Center

[At-Large Staff]

8 April 2013
For Immediate Release
 
ICANN Engagement Center to Open In Beijing
46th Public Meeting in Beijing is Largest Ever
Beijing, ChinaŠ ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Fadi Chehadé
announced today that the organization will open its first new global
engagement office in Beijing.

³Engagement with China is not merely an option, we simply must engage at
every level or we will lose our legitimacy,² said Chehadé. ³This is part of
our effort to embrace the world.²

The ICANN leader made the announcement during the welcoming session at
ICANN¹s 46th public meeting in Beijing - the largest meeting in the 15-year
history of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

So far more than 2,100 people have so far show up for the Beijing meeting.

³We¹ve never seen anything like it,² said Nick Tomasso, ICANN¹s Senior
Director of Meetings. ³Last year 1,821 showed up for our meeting in Prague
in the Czech Republic which, until now, was our largest meeting.  That
record has now been broken and people are still arriving.²

The announcement of ICANN¹s expanding presence in China was heralded by
Chinese Internet leaders.

³Our Internet future will now be brilliant,² said Madam Hu Qiheng, the
President of the Internet Society of China. ³This is bridge for ICANN and
China and it will lead to greater expansion of Internet development.²

ICANN Board Chair Dr. Stephen Crocker pointed out the dramatic growth of
Internet users in China in the past decade.

³In the past decade, Internet use has increase ten fold,² said Crocker.
³There are now 564 million Internet users in China and that is expected to
climb sharply in the future.²

ICANN¹s public meeting in Beijing will continue through the week.

###

To download high-resolution photos from the welcoming session of ICANN¹s
public meeting in Beijing, go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/icann/sets/72157633193204460/

MEDIA CONTACTS:    

Brad White

Director of Global Media Affairs

Washington, DC, USA

Tel. +1 202.570.7118

brad.white at icann.org

 

Andrew Robertson

Edelman Public Relations

London, U.K.

Tel. + 44 (7811) 341 945

andrew.Robertson at edelman.com

 

About ICANN: ICANN¹s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified
global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an
address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be
unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these
unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't
have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit
public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world
dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It
promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet¹s unique
identifiers. ICANN doesn¹t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop
spam and it doesn¹t deal with access to the Internet. But through its
coordination role of the Internet¹s naming system, it does have an important
impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information
please visit: www.icann.org <http://www.icann.org> .

 

 


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