Make Your Website Work in China: ICP, Hosting and Compliance Consulting

QPSoftware helps foreign companies make their website work in China: ICP and PSB filings, hosting and CDN, blocked resources and personal data rules. Founded in 2009 and based in Shanghai, we have delivered more than 200 projects, among them the corporate website of Smiths Interconnect, whose key points included ICP registration.

A website can be legal in China and still load badly there, or load fast and miss a required registration. We check both, then work with you on what needs fixing.

ICP filing and PSB filing: the registrations your website needs

A website served from mainland China starts with an ICP registration. China requires an ICP filing for non-commercial internet information services and an ICP license for commercial ones. Alibaba Cloud’s ICP filing documentation is clear on the scope: a domain that resolves to servers in the Chinese mainland must obtain an ICP filing before providing services, and the filing applies only to servers located in the mainland.

The applicant is an entity registered in mainland China, and the file goes through the hosting provider before the authorities review it. Mobile apps and mini programs have had their own filing since a 2023 notice of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Our guide to the ICP license in China explains which permit fits your business model and which documents to prepare. If you have no company in China yet, see the types of companies you can set up in China and how to get a business license in China.

A second registration follows once the site is online: the PSB filing, with the public security bureau. China’s rules on the security of international network connections, issued by the Ministry of Public Security, require organizations to file within 30 days of their network connection going live. Our PSB filing guide goes through the steps, and our guide to registering a .cn domain name covers the identity check a Chinese domain requires.

What we do: we check which permit applies to your business model, prepare the documents with you, and manage the ICP application with your hosting provider, then the PSB filing.

Hosting and CDN: mainland China or Hong Kong?

Where your site is served from decides both the paperwork and the speed in China.

• Mainland China. A server or CDN nodes inside the mainland bring your pages close to your visitors. They require the ICP filing first.
• Hong Kong or elsewhere. A server outside the mainland needs no ICP filing. The pages then cross the border to reach visitors in China, so their weight and their speed have to be tested from there.

The choice depends on your plans for China. Local hosting needs an entity in mainland China and suits a long-term presence; a company without a local entity starts outside the mainland. How to host your website in China goes through the steps, our guide to cloud hosting in China compares the main providers, and speeding up a website in China with a CDN explains what a content delivery network changes.

What we do: we recommend the hosting that fits your plans, then set up the servers, the CDN and the deployment. For the Go City WeChat Mini Program, our team deployed the backend on AWS services such as EC2, RDS and S3, and worked on fast loading for users on both sides of the Great Firewall.

Why is a website blocked or slow in China?

A site can be online and compliant, and still fail for visitors in China. When a page waits for a script, a font, a map or a video hosted on a service that is blocked in China, it loads slowly or breaks, wherever the site is hosted. A distant server and heavy pages add to the delay.

The fix is in the code: remove or replace each blocked resource with an equivalent that works in China, and lighten the pages. For the Erno Laszlo brand website in China, our developers avoided the third-party plugins and APIs that are blocked there, optimized the code for desktop and mobile, and submitted the sitemap to Baidu through its webmaster tools. Why your website doesn’t work in China details the usual causes and their fixes, and how to optimize WordPress in China applies them to WordPress sites.

What we do: we list what each page loads, test the pages from our office in Shanghai, and replace what fails.

PIPL: personal data rules for your website

China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) has applied since November 1, 2021. It covers the personal information of people in China, including processing done outside China to offer them products or services or to analyze their behavior, so the location of your server does not take you out of its scope. Sending their data abroad requires one of the routes set by the law, such as a security assessment, a certification or a standard contract, and the separate consent of the people concerned.

On a website, personal data comes in through contact forms, user accounts, analytics tools and integrations with your CRM. Our PIPL compliance guide for foreign companies details the obligations and the transfer mechanisms.

What we do: we map what your site collects and where the data goes, then adapt forms, consent and integrations alongside your legal counsel.

How we make your website work in China

1. Audit. Where the site is hosted, what each page loads, which registrations exist and what personal data it collects.
2. Recommendation. Hosting in mainland China or outside it, ICP filing or license, and the resources to replace, in line with your plans for China.
3. Registrations and setup. The ICP application with your hosting provider, the PSB filing, then servers, CDN and deployment.
4. Fixes and tests. Blocked resources replaced, pages lightened and tested from China.
5. Launch and follow-up. Registration numbers displayed on the site, and filings updated when the domain or the hosting changes.

Each step is reviewed with you, as described in our project methodology. If your site also needs a Chinese version, our team handles website localization for China.