Challenges of Hosting Websites in China – An Overview

Jul 27,2021 by Manoj Yadav

China continues to grow impressively even as the world markets struggle to find some semblance of stability. The impressive rate of growth in specific sectors is expected to continue in 2016, according to many economic experts and research reports. Are you too planning to take advantage of this situation and grab your bite of the profit pie? Well, that’s not going to be easy

Challenges Entrepreneurs Face In Launching Business in China China has half a billion of its population using the internet. It represents a whopping 40 per cent of the population of the country. Businesses selling products and services online will find China a ready marketplace to ply their wares and earn impressive profits. However, starting a business in China can be difficult. Hosting a website in China can pose numerous challenges, if you are unaware of how to negotiate the potential landmines that the authorities may place in your path.

The Great Firewall – The Biggest Roadblock It is a fact, certainly not a rumor, spread by vested interests that hosting a website and managing an online business in China are indeed complicated tasks. The Chinese government has this penchant for controlling the information, which can be detrimental for smooth operations of any business. With the peering points very limited, your website can run into operational issues. Most Internet Service Protocols are unwilling to work in coordination in China. Your website performance will be affected as loading times will be excruciatingly slow. But before that you will have to face what many say is the biggest challenge of launching an online business in China – The Great Firewall! –

Why So Many Regulations The Great Firewall is a regulatory system controlled by the government with an intention of controlling data and information exchange within the country. In many ways, it affects the ability of companies to reach their target market in China and their local customers. The purpose of firewall and some similar government-controlled systems is to have absolute control on the flow of information. An economy angle can also be detected behind this regulation, they want to protect their local markets by discouraging global players. It seems that the intent is to pave way for local businesses and Chinese startups to have a steel grip on key and profitable business sectors. The Great Firewall and the absence of peering points can result in truly long waits for page loads and frequent timeouts.

It can result in poor user experience, especially on pages served from outside China. You can also face problems while using third-party services. Features and facilities that are obvious choices in other parts of the globe, such as embedded Google Maps are blocked in China, which can impact the quality of your website’s performance.

Protecting Local Business Interests – The Priority If the western world views all these restrictions and licensing processes as a sign of insecurity, or a desperate act of a government, obsessed with control, the Chinese may not agree entirely. They point out that it is a matter of business. China has blocked access to the popular search engine Google, which has probably resulted in the flourishing of their own search engine, Baidu. The local messaging service WeChat has boomed probably because of the restrictions on use of Facebook and WhatsApp.

Weibo is the Chinese version of Twitter and it is a huge hit among Chinese social media users. Businesses planning for website hosting in China may have to deal with some practical regulations. Some industries that are considered sensitive may find it mandatory to host in China to sell their services and products in the Chinese marketplace. Industries such as finance, tourism, education and those selling pharma products are subject to stringent regulations and have to satisfy a host of conditions to obtain permission to sell in China.

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