With an online population of close to 1.02 billion internet users in China in January 2022, China is one of the largest online communities of untapped consumers in the world. To gain access to this market your business will have to acquire an ICP license which enables you to operate a website inside of China.

Technically you can host your website outside of China without an ICP license, but there are limitations, simply because your site is hosted outside of The Great Firewall. Hosting outside of China is not a practical long-term solution. You can check out our article detailing the perils of hosting a website outside of China while trying to reach the Chinese market to find out more but I will briefly summarise the issues here.
If your website does not have an ICP license it will be slowed down for users inside of China while the Great Firewall of China conducts its scans on the content for contentious keywords and your site will find it hard to achieve valuable SEO with search giant Baidu (used by 90% of Chinese internet users) as the search engine massively favors websites hosted inside of China with an ICP license.
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Acquiring an ICP license enables you to have unfettered access to the Chinese market and allows your website to bypass many time-consuming checks allowing it to be displayed to the end-user expediently with low latency and zero lost packets.
When it comes down to it Chinese internet users desire the same speed and performance as those of your other markets. If your site does not have an ICP license it will be slow to deliver rich media content such as video and images and this can lead to users leaving the site before it has an opportunity to load on their devices. Once you have an ICP license however you can be assured that your message is able to reach its intended audience in a timely fashion.

Once your business has its own ICP license it will be able to compete on a level playing field with Chinese national businesses inside of China for SEO rankings and visibility. Put succinctly this ensures that you are maximizing the not insignificant opportunity provided by the Chinese market. There is no doubt that obtaining an ICP license can help to unlock the Chinese market for foreign companies, but it is true that it can add a layer of bureaucratic complexity to your operations inside of China.
Related reading: 5 ways to increase your conversion rate by optimizing your website speed in China
Despite this, it is a worthwhile pursuit that is sure to smoothen the process of gaining a meaningful foothold inside China. To make it even easier to gain an ICP license you can speak to GoClick China today to find out how their suite of tools can assist your business in reaching the Chinese market as quickly and in as hassle-free a process as possible.
To learn more about succeeding in China, check out our other articles.
If you want to learn more about testing in China, check out our solutions.