Ask HN: How does your global site handle China?

1 point·eemil··4 comments

Assuming you've decided to deal with the ICP filings and other quirks of the Chinese Internet, how does your global website serve users on a technical level?

Do you have a separate .cn version hosted in China?

Are you using a specialized CDN like CloudFlare China Network?

Are you using a GeoDNS service with servers in China?

Something else?

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Why do you start by assuming ICP registration? The Great Firewall is a denylist. Some technical choices you can make will involve working with Chinese companies that legally require you to file the paperwork, but by default, you can just do nothing and your global site will be available in China.

but the denylist is dynamically changing, a site may be added to the list silently if it goes popular with forbidden content

also, local ISPs often limit abroad bandwidth for cost saving

ICP registration doesn't mean you can serve forbidden content without repercussions...

Bandwidth and/or latency can be good technical reasons to host locally, but unless you're e.g. streaming video, it probably won't be much of an issue.

That's certainly one way to go, and this "best effort" support as you describe it is what I personally advocate for. Put it out there on the free Internet, and if it works in China as well, great.

But if your business has customers in China, and wants to retain them long-term, this is untenable. Not only do you risk getting blocked on a whim, but without local servers latency will suffer as well.

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