VPS/VDS in China

A server in mainland China makes sense when a project's main audience lives in China and needs a fast, stable site or app: an online store for Chinese shoppers, a service for trading partners, a corporate system for a Chinese office. It is the most paperwork-heavy hosting market in the world, so below is what you will have to sort out before the server can go public.

Account verification and ICP

Chinese clouds and hosts are required to verify their customers: an account on a mainland platform needs identity verification, and local providers ask for a Chinese ID card or company registration. The international editions of the big clouds register foreigners with a passport or company details, but even there checks are stricter than in Europe.

The second step is ICP filing (备案, bei'an). For a site on its own domain to be served on ports 80 and 443 of a server in China, the domain must be registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology through the host. This requires a Chinese legal entity or a Chinese citizen, and commercial sites with online sales also need a commercial ICP licence. Without the filing, the host closes the web ports for the domain. The server can still be used for APIs on non-standard ports, corporate systems and data processing, but a public website must be filed. If there is nobody to file under, sites for a Chinese audience are usually hosted in Hong Kong, where ICP is not required.

Allow time for this: review of an ICP application usually takes from one to several weeks, the domain must be registered with a registrar accredited in China with verified owner details, and the filing number has to appear in the site footer. If you move the site to another host, the filing has to be redone, so choose a provider with the long term in mind. Mobile apps that talk to a server in China have needed a separate app filing since 2023, also done through the host and the app stores.

Regions and the three carriers

Cloud regions are spread across the country: Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, plus large facilities in the north, in Inner Mongolia and Hebei province, where power is cheaper and the climate cooler. Choose the region nearest your audience: the north, east and south of the country differ by 20–40 ms of latency.

China's internet runs on three major carriers, and traffic exchange between them has historically been slower than within each network. So check whether the data centre is connected to all three at once (usually described as BGP multi-line). If a server is connected to only one carrier, subscribers of the other two get tens of extra milliseconds.

Connectivity with Europe, the US and the rest of the world

From Western Europe to Beijing or Shanghai expect roughly 200–300 ms, depending on whether traffic runs overland or by sea; from the US west coast it is typically 150–250 ms, and less on premium routes. China's international links are often congested in the evening Beijing time, so a server in China serves local users well but is not suited to an audience outside the country.

Also keep in mind that a number of foreign services are not available from mainland China, and international traffic passes through national-level filtering (often called the Great Firewall), which adds latency and can make foreign sites slower or unreachable for Chinese users. For your server's users this means: if your site or app depends on external fonts, maps, analytics, sign-in with foreign accounts or payment forms, those features may not work for Chinese visitors. Check your project's dependencies before launch; Chinese clouds run their own mirrors of Linux, Docker and programming-language package repositories.

Data laws and payment

• The Cybersecurity Law requires operators to keep logs, cooperate with the regulator and moderate content, and requires critical information infrastructure operators to store data in China.
• The Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) requires consent to processing and restricts transfers of Chinese users' data abroad: large volumes need a security assessment or a standard contract.
• The Data Security Law introduces data classification, with separate export rules for "important data".

Content rules are strict, and hosts carry out the regulator's requirements without delay. If your project also handles data on EU residents, GDPR rules on transfers outside the EU apply on top of Chinese law, so map which data goes where before you choose a location.

Payment: international clouds take foreign Visa and Mastercard cards, invoice companies for payment by bank transfer and bill in US dollars or yuan; some resellers accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. Local payment apps require a Chinese account. China is on UTC+8, seven hours ahead of Central Europe in winter. The "Payment" column in the table above shows the methods for each plan. If you need a location near China without these formalities, compare Japan, South Korea and the general VPS in Asia section.