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Any commercial site operating in China needs an Internet Content Provider license? How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would want to hack tog

Any commercial site operating in China needs an Internet Content Provider license? How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would want to hack together a website and start making money from it? How difficult/expensive/slow is it to get an ICP?

gommm 16y ago
Yes, but if the website is in english, it's more likely to be tolerated... Also a chinese language website has an unofficial grace period of 2 months.. 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...
wqfeng 16y ago
1. Yes. 2. ... 3. It depends.If the government thinks the site is harmful, you probably won't get the license.
garply 16y ago
Yes, but for little startups / projects like the kind you mentioned, you could likely go through a middleman with good connections who could get you a working ICP, which would probably technically be that of a shell company you did not own but which was 'lending' you the ICP. Once you got bigger, you would have the money to go through more official channels. 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.
dublinclontarf 16y ago
The solution is not to operate the site IN China, as long as it's not too popular or doesn't allow people to express their opinions or communicate with each other(think bbs) it'll be ok.

gommm 16y ago

Yes, but if the website is in english, it's more likely to be tolerated... Also a chinese language website has an unofficial grace period of 2 months.. 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...

wqfeng 16y ago

1. Yes. 2. ... 3. It depends.If the government thinks the site is harmful, you probably won't get the license.

garply 16y ago

Yes, but for little startups / projects like the kind you mentioned, you could likely go through a middleman with good connections who could get you a working ICP, which would probably technically be that of a shell company you did not own but which was 'lending' you the ICP. Once you got bigger, you would have the money to go through more official channels. 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.

dublinclontarf 16y ago

The solution is not to operate the site IN China, as long as it's not too popular or doesn't allow people to express their opinions or communicate with each other(think bbs) it'll be ok.