China will participate more vigorously in the drawing up of international Internet standards as the number of Chinese netizens continues to grow, China's top Internet scientists said on Tuesday.

"We need to develop more standards to make sure that the Internet becomes easier to access for non-English language speakers," said Hu Qiheng, the nation's Internet guru and the director general of the Internet Society of China.

China is the largest non-English speaking nation online, with more than 500 million Internet users.

On the same day, the world's first e-mail using Chinese characters as an address was sent by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The e-mail was based on standards designed by the China Internet Network Information Center, the State Internet information facility.

The new standards will support e-mail addresses using different languages, including Arabic and Japanese, according to the center.

"The new standards mark the end of the English-dominated e-mail industry, and it's also the latest signal indicating that China will beef up its power in designing Internet standards suitable for global use," said Dai Xiaohui, an official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.