Currently I am creating a website which has a common topic for an article, but it's going to be different content for each country, and also, each of that content will be provided in several languages. And this mechanism exists in most of the parts in the website.

For example, I have an article about tax. This article has to be different for each country, for example china. And tax content for china should be written in china AND english language (for non china-speaker). What is the best URL pattern to handle this?

What I've been thinking is, using a sub folder (/country-code/language-code/) such as:

• www.example.com/cn/cn/tax
• www.example.com/cn/en/tax

Or using top level domain such as:

• www.example.cn/cn/tax
• www.example.cn/en/tax

Or subdomain such as

• cn.example.com/cn/tax
• cn.example.com/en/tax

I think I will not prefer the last option since I might need to use subdomain for other purpose. Which left only subfolder and TLDN. I've read some articles saying that TLDN is good for localized content (language-specific content), but in my case, my TLDN will also has english contents (for non local speaker) which is specific only to that particular country (also the purpose of this is to let people from other country easily search it through google).

What is the best pattern to pick and why?.