ICP Registration: Smoothing the Hurdles of Chinese Web Hosting

China has a system of regulating websites which requires every commercial website hosted in Mainland China to be registered and licensed there. As the Chinese Government continues to loosen restrictions on foreign investment, consumer-based organizations are seeing an increased desire to access China’s rapidly expanding middle class and applications for web licenses are rising.

Since the early 2000’s a web presence has been the cornerstone for most consumer businesses; unfortunately, when it comes to maintaining a web presence in China, there is little written guidance available in English and the help of advisors such as Alibaba Cloud can make a huge difference in smoothing the application process.

This whitepaper introduces and guides English-speaking business professionals and developers through the legal and technical steps to hosting a website or e-commerce platform in Mainland China. Note that companies looking to host domains or e-commerce platforms in Hong Kong do not require ICP registration. Hong Kong is not subject to ICP regulations.