CINET (China InterNETworking discussion group) is established in August 1993, with the agreement with some networking professionals in Beijing. Its mission is to help China develop network and promote communication among network professionals inside and outside China.

CINET is initiated by Jian Ding (Network Engineer at University of Texas, Arlington) and Cindy Zheng (Systems Manager at San Diego Supercomputer Center), and it's technically supported by a network-based volunteer organization CND (China News Digest).

CINET is a private discussion group, its members and volunteer editors are from many different countries. All major international email sites in China are in CINET. They include IHEP (The Institute of High Energy Physics), NCFC (National Computer network Facility of China, which include CASnet, TUnet and PUnet), CRN (The Chinese Research Network) and CAnet (Beijing Institute for Computing Application).

CINET publishes a semi-monthly newsletter. The newsletter is distributed within CINET and over CHINANET. The newsletters and other China-networking related information are archived at ftp.cnd.org under pub/cinet and are accessible via anonymous-ftp, gopher and www.