Hi Edmon, colleagues,

Speaking from the perspective my team and I have -- that is, supporting multiple (~12) registries in their China compliance and go-to-market planning and execution, I think the biggest policy issue facing the registry side right now is whether, or not, RSEPs will be needed for registries to integrate with the new China "gateway" services (such as the ZDNS/KNET service). It was .XYZ which initially lodged RSEP to ICANN (without prompting by ICANN, as far as I know) and then, a week or so later, withdrew it. Those who were at the recent GDD meeting in LA will have noted that ICANN did raise the issue of registries integrating with new China backends could cause security and stability problems. Naturally, this would trigger RSTEP review, introducing an interesting new layer of uncertainty and delay for long-suffering registry operators.

So, this is the major policy issue from where my colleagues and I sit. Registries are asking themselves "to RSEP or not to RSEP?". Many (most?) we work with have the informal position that RSEP is not necessary, one reason being the new Gateway integrations are not dissimilar from the kinds of integrations that huge numbers of resellers have with registrars such as Hexonet, Open SRS, etc; another reason being that the Gateways won't be causing upstream impacts at all.

So now we have uncertainty from the MIIT side as well as from the ICANN side, with the registry ops in the middle, and registrars and registrants all being impacted in ways that are arguably more disruptive than stewards of the DNS probably should be allowing. Clarity is, as is usually the case with new Gs into China, the rarest of commodities.

Is this framing adequate, Edmon?

Best regards, S.