GB/T 46466-2025Chinese internet email addresses - General technical requirements for the framework (English PDF)

Foreword

This document complies with the provisions of GB/T 1.1-2020 "Standardization Work Guidelines Part

1.Structure and Drafting Rules of Standardization Documents". Drafting. Please note that some content in this document may involve patents. The issuing organization of this document assumes no responsibility for identifying patents. This document was proposed and is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China. This document was drafted by: China Internet Network Information Center, Guangdong YingShi Computer Technology Co., Ltd., and Computer Network Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Information Center, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Internet Society of China, China Telecom Group Corporation, Tsinghua University, China United Network Communications China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., Domain Name Registration Management Center for Government and Public Institutions, Beijing 263 Enterprise Connect Xinyi Co., Ltd., China Communications Standards Association. The main drafters of this document are. Yao Jiankang, Li Hongtao, Chen Leihua, Qin Xiaowei, Xu Lei, Pei Wei, Yang Xue, Ding Jiajia, Li Yanbiao, Wang Lang, and Zhong Rui. Lin Yanzhong, Wu Xiucheng, Chen Yingtang, Zhang Rongsheng, Liu Baojun, Liu Yue, Sun Le, Li Qinfeng, Jiao Haiyan, Fu Yu, He Wei, Cai Qing, Zhang Likun, Zhang Zhiyong Sha Xiaoshuang, Wang Chao, Wang Cuicui, Zhou Xiaolei, Gong Jia, Du Ming. Overall Technical Requirements for Chinese Email Address Framework

1 Scope

GB/T 46466-2025 is the Chinese national standard covering the framework for email addresses in Chinese - the structure of the local part and the domain, the normalisation and comparison rules, the interworking with the ASCII world, and the requirements placed on each component of the mail chain. First edition, and it is the parent of the protocol parts such as GB/T 46465-2025. In force from 1 February 2026. Issued on 31 October 2025, it has been in force since 1 February 2026.

This document specifies the overall technical requirements for the framework of using Chinese email addresses on the Internet. This document applies to email address service providers and software vendors developing applications or services that support Chinese email addresses. Services, etc.

2 Normative references

The contents of the following documents, through normative references within the text, constitute essential provisions of this document. Dated citations are not included. For references to documents, only the version corresponding to that date applies to this document; for undated references, the latest version (including all amendments) applies. This document.

GB/T 1988-1998 Information Technology - Seven-bit Coded Character Set for Information Interchange

GB/T 32397-2015 Technical Requirements for the Format of Email Headers for Chinese Email Addresses

GB/T 32398-2015 Technical Requirements for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Extended Specification for Chinese Email Addresses

GB/T 44266-2024 General Technical Requirements for Chinese Domain Names

GB/T 46465-2025 Technical Requirements for the Post Office Protocol (POP) for Chinese Email Addresses

GB/T 46467-2025 Technical Requirements for Interactive Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) for Chinese Email Addresses

3 Terms and Definitions

The following terms and definitions apply to this document.

3.1 email (electronicmail.email) On a computer network, this refers to the communication between user terminals. [Source: GB/T 5271.32-2006, 32.01.01, with modifications]

3.2 Unicode character Characters are identified by their position or code point, and each character is given a unique number.

Note. For example, U 12AB refers to the character located at 12AB in the Unicode table. [Source: GB/T 46465-2025, 3.2]

3.3 This method represents a string of characters in the Unicode character encoding table as a string of bytes. The characters are represented using... Encoding is done using sequences of 1 to 4 8-bit bytes. In a sequence of only one 8-bit byte, the high-order bits are 0, and the rest are... 7 bits are used for character value encoding. In a sequence of n (n > 1) 8-bit bytes, the high n bits of the initial 8-bit byte are 1, followed by... The first bit is 0, and the remaining bits of this byte contain the bits of the encoded character value. The most significant bit of all subsequent 8-bit bytes is 1, and the next bit is... 0, the remaining 6 bits of each byte contain the bits of the encoded character. [Source: GB/T 46465-2025, 3.3]