Today I received the following email from a Chinese domain registration center:

Dear Manager,

(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO,Thanks)

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China.

We received an application from Huaxiang Ltd on September 18, 2013. They want to register ” shenzhennoted ” as their Internet Keyword and ” shenzhennoted .cn “、” shenzhennoted .com.cn ” 、” shenzhennoted .net.cn “、” shenzhennoted .org.cn ” domain names etc.., they are in China domain names. But after checking it, we find ” shenzhennoted ” conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not?

Has anyone else received a similar message?

I’m curious as to how my domain name might have come to the attention of Huaxiang Ltd. I googled Huaxiang and came up with several different companies, which are located throughout the China, so its unclear which company was actually trying to register “Shenzhen Noted”. But nevertheless it is clear that someone wants to pre-empt me from registering my blog in China and — what? — force me to buy it back from them?

I’d appreciate any insights into what’s happening.