Going the super-official route would be a bit painful unless you already owned a company because the minimal financing for a corporation is high here (compared to the US).
More generally, the rule is - don't yammer about sensitive political issues and try to follow the law and you'll probably be OK.
On how to get the ICP, well I can only speak as a foreigner but it's indeed rather difficult, you need to have a chinese WOFE (Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise) setup to be able to ask for the ICP license and this means you have to inject 30 0 000RMB (45,000$ different provinces have different capital requirements, I'm quoting those from shanghai) within 1 year in your business. After that, I'm not sure of the process but I know that you have to agree to censor user generated contents...
Companies that I know here often first test their idea in the taiwanese and hong kong market before going to the chinese market. Other companies I've seen use the ICP license of partner companies but this can be tricky...