In article <017c01d6655d$054525f0$0fcf71d0$@acm.org> you write:
John Levine wrote:
China is a very large special case, because literally everyone in China has a Wechat acccount and that's their online identity. Statista says they have 1.2 billion active users.
To the extent they use e-mail, it's to communicate with people in other countries.
Using EAI email addresses not so important then?
Not in China. We talked to Tencent about a year and a half ago, and learned that the way most people type Chinese into their computers is ASCII pinyin so they know the ASCII alphabet even if they don't speak English. E-mail addresses are often either the pinyin or their numeric account ID at whatever service hosts the mail. Tencent will probably support EAI but not due to command from their own customers. If someone has an unusual name written with an uncommon character, when he says what his name is he often wiill draw the character in the air with his finger which doesn't help if you can't see him. The pinyin comes directly from the sound of the name so it's a better mail identifier than the uncommon character. R's, John