Optimizing your website for Mainland China

You may have heard that websites are inaccessible in China, cutting you off from over a billion potential users. That’s not entirely true.

What’s often referred to in the West as the “Great Firewall of China” doesn’t usually block foreign shops or business websites directly. Instead, it restricts access to certain domains and IP addresses (servers). If your site is set up correctly, it can still load without issues in Mainland China.

Think of it like traveling abroad: different countries have different rules. For example, you might be able to bring fresh fruit from France into Germany, but not into Australia. Similarly, China allows traffic from some servers while blocking others.

This article gives you a short overview of what is important when it comes to optimizing your website for Mainland China. If you want a more detailed, customized report for your website, consider taking a look at my (Wolfgang Geiger / Wohok Solutions) China Website Audit.

Server

Server in Mainland China

First of all, having a server inside Mainland China makes many of the problems listed below go away. However, that comes with requirements like ICP license, which in turn requires either a person or company inside of Mainland China that vouches for the content you publish on your website. So, for this article, we assume this is not an option for you.

Server outside Mainland China

The second-best option is to have a server in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan – physically close to the Mainland. Especially Hong Kong has a couple of companies that advertise having direct cables into Mainland China, leading to better access there.

Singapore is also an option, however, interestingly the connection to Mainland China is rather poor sometimes as it relies on 1-2 underwater sea cables that are often having problems. So, if you have the choice, Hong Kong is definitely the better option.

Servers anywhere else in the world are also fine but might be a bit slower compared to the above.

Blocked server providers

There are some well known server providers that are either blocked or not always available inside of Mainland China. WordPress.com (not WordPress itself but the hosting company) is one example, Shopify used to have problems but seems to have gotten better recently.

Interestingly, Google Cloud is working fine, so you can have a server there and run your website from their servers.

Sometimes it’s a bit hit-and-miss. You might, for example, have a server where the IP address has been blocked in the past due to another website. In this case, the easiest way to get things working is to switch servers.

CDN

A CDN is used in the West to make your website load faster. This is done by uploading files that don’t change (images, JavaScript files, CSS files, fonts) to multiple servers around the world and then loading it on the user side from the server that is closest to the user.

Problem with that in Mainland China is twofold:

  • First of all, the CDN usually has a different domain than the website. Looking up foreign domains can take time in Mainland China and sometimes fails
  • Problem number two is that those CDN servers have different IP addresses, which has the potential to be blocked

The safest way to get this working is to load all of your files from the server your website is on. This minimizes the risk that your website loads, but your CDN files don’t.

Google Services

Most people think Google is blocked in China, that’s actually not the case. Some Google services work, some don’t. Search isn’t working which is the most famous one, however, your website might also be using some that are causing problems without you even knowing it.

What’s not working

Let’s start with the most important question, what should be avoided:

  • Google Fonts: load them from your server directly
  • Google ReCaptcha: Don’t’ use it, Mainland customers might not be able to login, submit a form or make a purchase
  • Google Maps: not working when embedded. Workaround is to show a screenshot of the map on your website and link it out to Google Maps
  • Youtube: not working when embedded. Workaround again is to manually upload the thumbnail to your server and link to Youtube. This way people in the West can watch while people in Mainland China can still load the website.

What is working

Many Google services, however, are working:

  • Google Analytics is ok
  • Google AdSense is ok
  • Google Cloud servers can be used

Google Tag Manager

This is working, however, if you can, avoid using Google Tag Manager on your website you should, as it slows things down quite considerably. Using it means another step between loading the things in the Tag Manager and having the website itself loaded, which leads to slower loading times overall.

Speed Optimization

Good news here is that (almost) everything you should do to optimize your website for users outside of Mainland China is also beneficial for users in Mainland China (except for using a CDN maybe).

To check how your website is doing with regards to speed, you can go to https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and see what Google likes and doesn’t like about your website. The better your score, the quicker the website will load.

Social Media

I’m not the expert on this, but having sharing options only for Western social media will not work inside of Mainland China. Therefore, you should add links to make your website and content shareable on platforms like WeChat, Weibo, XiaoHongShu, etc. to take advantage of the probably most important marketing channel in Mainland China, which is social.

Embedding Social Media

This is something you have to be very careful with as it will slow your website down a lot. Don’t embed Youtube videos, don’t use share buttons that load a Javascript file e.g. from Facebook. As a rule of thumb, you can link to content on Western social media including having a screenshot of the content hosted on your website, you should not embed or load it on the website directly from their server.

Social Media Analytics

What about e.g. Facebook Pixel or other social media advertising tools? You can still use that as long as you make sure it’s loaded after the full website has been loaded. That would then make sure the users in Mainland China can load the website first with the Pixel, etc. potentially failing to load later.

3rd Party CSS & Javascript Files

As stated above for social media, be very careful with third party CSS and Javascript files that you load on your websites. If you have to include them, ideally make sure they’re deferred/asynchronous or loaded in the footer of the website.

Payments

If you want to sell to customers in Mainland China, relying on credit card payments isn’t the best option, since credit card use is far less common than in many Western markets. Instead, most online and offline transactions are handled through mobile payment systems.

The two dominant platforms are Alipay and WeChat Pay, which together cover nearly all Chinese internet users and are accepted almost everywhere. For a more traditional option, there’s also UnionPay, China’s widely used bank card system, which works similarly to a debit or credit card. By supporting these three payment methods, you’ll be able to support virtually any Chinese customer’s payment needs.

If your website is using Stripe to handle payments, you can simply activate Alipay in the Stripe backend: https://stripe.com/en-hk/payment-method/alipay

If you are looking for a different option, in Hong Kong many companies rely on PayDollar: https://www.paydollar.com/en/index.html

Testing Your Website in Mainland China

To test your website in Mainland China there are two options I personally rely on:

  1. Use https://www.webpagetest.org/ and pick a Mainland China location. Shanghai is often overrun for the free test, so maybe use one of the other ones there.
  2. Have a person in Mainland China use a local network to test the website (better solution).

Limitations

Implementing the above will increase the likelihood of your website loading smoothly in Mainland China. However, nothing is guaranteed. Here are the most likely problems you’ll run into:

  • Somehow the Great Firewall doesn’t like your website and it is blocked (rare):
    In this case there’s nothing that can be done really except for maybe trying a new domain/server
  • Your website might load for most Chinese users but users in some areas report a blank screen:
    This might be due to DNS issues that sometimes hit, especially smaller, foreign websites. The more popular your website gets in Mainland China the more those problems should go away
  • Change of rules:
    Something out of anyone’s control, but something that happens.

Entering Mainland China – Step by Step

If you’re thinking about entering the Mainland market and first want to network and get a feel for what’s possible, here’s what I would suggest with regards to your website:

  1. First try to get your website optimized as indicated above
  2. If that is not working, get a simple copy of your website made targeting the Mainland market, optimized along the rules laid out above and hosted ideally in Hong Kong
  3. When your company has established a physical/legal presence in Mainland China, then you can think about getting an ICP license and having a website hosted within the Mainland.

Conclusion

The above information should give you more clarity on what is and isn’t possible with regards to optimizing your website for Mainland China. As mentioned in the introduction, I offer a China Website Audit service at a reasonable price that provides you with a report listing what needs to change on your website to be accessible within Mainland China.

Other than that, I’m sure you’re in good hands working with Marcus and his team at Jademond and they will provide actionable advice in this area as well.

Together, we’ll figure out how to help our brands earn a place in the answers—wherever, and however, people are asking.

About Wolfgang Geiger, Director at Wohok Solutions Limited in Hong Kong - Wolfgang has been creating websites for over 20 years. He studied Chinese for 2 years in Beijing and is now living in Hong Kong. Wolfgang is an expert WordPress developer who, among other things, is helping Western companies make their websites accessible in Mainland China and Chinese companies to establish an online presence outside of the Mainland. You can learn more about Wolfgang on his company’s website: https://wohok-solutions.com/about/
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