Registering names in Asia and China

We received an email out of the blue a few weeks ago that noted another company is trying to register domain names in China with our same domain name. Is domain name registration in China the same as the US - or are they required to contact a US domain holder, as stated in this email, to ensure they're not infringing on existing tradenames?

Should we proceed with registering these name through this company? The want a registration fee of somewhere in the range of 25-45dollar per domain depending on the country.

Also, in terms of expanding our website internatinally, our plan was to simply do this via subdomains (for example china.ourdomain.com). Is there any reason to purchase a bunch of domains for each country vs. going with a subdomain?

Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in China. We have something which needs to confirm with you. We formally received an application on 22, Jul 2011. One company called "Cemeng Asia Trading LLC" is applying to register "yourDomainName" as Brand name and domain names as below:

ourdomain.asia

ourdomain.com.cn

ourdomain.com.hk

ourdomain.com.tw

ourdomain.hk

ourdomain.net.cn

ourdomain.org.cn

ourdomain.tw

After our initial checking, we found the brand name and domain names being applied are as same as your company! So we need confirmation with your company. If the aforementioned company is your business partner or your subsidiary, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you don't have any relationship with this company, please contact us within 5 workdays. If over the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by "Cemeng Asia Trading LLC" unconditionally.

Definitely you should do NOTHING.

"We received an email out of the blue a few weeks ago that noted another company is trying to register domain names in China" - This is well known SCAM.

You only need a small number of domain names, preferably in the countries were you do actual business and .com

I prefer domain.com/zh - where "zh" is the language of translation. Take note that China is special case because of the Great Firewall of China. For doing effectively business you may have to purchase some domain.cn and comply with all Chinese Government regulations.

I also received an email from this website ,http://www.didnr.org/ The email read: if i didn't register my company under their Asian Domain they would go ahead and register my company in seven days with an obvious fake Holdings company.