The Financial Times cited last week that the international body that regulates internet addresses will support countries that want to use their own letters and characters in internet addresses. That means that internet users in China’s countryside will gain access to a whole new world without having to struggle with an unfamilar English alphabet. Small Chinese companies will become more accessible to native Chinese language users who do not know English characters, since the small businesses are typically outbid in the English-keyword search results lists the larger domestic companies buy out. The new standard also means the central government will have to be more creative in plugging the holes in the GFW that will appear due to the richness and flexibility of the Chinese language, holes dissidents love to poke. And then there is the sheer number of new Chinese users that will no longer feel hindered exploring cyberspace that censors will feel incumbent to control.

In 2010 – when the new standard comes in use – expect an inflection point in the number of new users in China that log on. And expect an inflection point in the blood pressure of Chinese censors, too.