English posts on SEO for Baidu often contains some wrong ideas, including this one: choose a .CN domain for Chinese market, instead of a .COM one., because the former would be helpful to rankings on Baidu.
When I first saw this, I was very surprised because as a Chinese webmaster in the past decade or so, I’ve never heard such a saying in China, and our common sense is that a .COM domain would be the best, because it’s the most acceptable one, and is easy to remember.
Besides, some Chinese website owners have even claimed that .CN domains are very troublesome to register and could face both policy and technical risks, especially when registered via Chinese agencies.
So, does domain extension affect rankings on Baidu? It’s known that some special domain extensions like gov.cn would offer ranking advantage over common domains, but the problem is, such domains are only for administrative units to register and use.
Therefore, forget about utilizing any domain extension for the good of SEO in Chinese market, and .com would always be the best, as stated above.