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So you want your app/website to work in China
- ashton314 8y agoI traveled to China for about a month and a half a few years ago. Everything was excruciatingly slow. Except for Hacker News. Probably more about the payload size than anything else. :) How many companies work hard to make their services readily available in China? Any notable exceptions?
- caprese 8y agoMaybe you were primarily trying to access services outside of China? Within China things can be decently fast and low latency - from what I hear - and it is a large place with a lot of compute infrastructure. You have to treat it as its own world. Where on the outside, all we see is the chaos and interruption of a hurricane, but there is a center that is harder to see where people go about their daily lives and have decent amenities and ux.
- chillacy 8y agoExtra complex because the major networks don’t peer with each other very well so you end up having to have PoPs on Telecom, Unicom, and China Mobile.
- massivecali 8y agoOfftopic, but HN has always been a reliable check for me as to whether or not I have data service or it's just extremely slow as it always loads.
- snazz 8y agoHN occasionally becomes very, very slow (30-second load times), but usually this is just if you’re logged in and requesting templated content, as the front page is cached and loads instantly on a non-logged-in device. It does make a good connection test!
- lawrencegs 8y agoI thought I am the only one
- fungi 8y agoThis can depend on how you access to Internet. In my experience a Hong Kong travel SIM is best as everything will be pretty efficiently routed via honkers and uncensored. My home country SIM sucked as everything was routed back to my home country which is an awful round trip if you are trying to access a mainland site or service. If you are on a mainland travel SIM local services should be on par with what you use in the west and a good VPN should be pretty fast (especially if your gateway is honker).
- ganlub 8y agoLast I checked it didn't load without a VPN.
- victornomad 8y agoMy best best advices are not listed there - Stop using Google CDNs - Stop using Google fonts - Don't put Google Analytics in the header (or don't use it) otherwise will block/delay the browser load the website. Most of the websites just timeout because of those 3 things and make the website imposible to navigate. If you host your website in a normal VPS, without using Google services you will have a quite nice chance that the website loads pretty fast there in China. edit: formatting
- tonyaiken 8y agoYou can still use them, but a different URL. Google has a CDN in China for those fonts and stuff. Also Google Analytics are not blocked at all in China.
- lawrencegs 8y agoHow about Recaptcha?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- intellix 8y agoI'm thinking that generally it works but the other night during the nightly internet apocalypse I had to disable it all to use my own site. Will have to double check...
- intellix 8y agoyep, during the day you don't really notice cause VPNs work etc but once it gets to night, everything stops working
- kszxgz 8y agodoes not load
- lawrencegs 8y ago
- zoom6628 8y agoIve lived in mainland China most of last 12 years and work in software. The last paragraph is key one for most websites. You have to remove use of all G, FB and related site scripts because these will not run. There are good alternatives anyway so do yourself a favor and replace them with self-hosted or other 3rd party alternatives. There are sites for testing what is blocked in China - you should test all 3rd party scripts you are using to make sure they run ok.
- fungi 8y agowe moved everything we could to a mainland provider, generally there are good alternatives and cdn's for common stuff. what keeps biting is our tracking and re-conversion scripts that our marketing team insists on.
- rqs 8y agoJust read the article again only to realize the late paragraph was not "Good luck! Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus." LOL Anyway, before I had a stable proxy, I actually set up my local DNS to redirect all .google.com., .facebook.com. and their CDNs to 127.0.0.1 just so I can "unblock" some other webpages. That was not a good experience. Those script can actually be delayed from loading so they won't block the page. You don't need to actually remove them, just load them AFTER your page is loaded, and then most things will be fine. (Except for Google Recaptcha of course) It's a good practice to un-trust everything you don't have control, and maybe make exceptions from there. Don't by default trust everything.
- xfalcox 8y agoAny suggestions of services that help a company obtain the ICP License?
- jayalpha 8y agoI don't know out of my head (google it?) but I am pretty sure you need a mainland company.
- argd678 8y agoYou need a local company entity in China, I don’t think they allow it to be offered as a service. They want to know how to get in touch with you in person.
- outworlder 8y agoYou needs boots on the ground. So no.
- xyk2 8y agoYou can look into Alicloud (Alibaba Cloud) ICP, they provide English language services to help you set up a license. Still requires a locally registered entity (whether as a WFOE or a fully registered company) but they help a lot in navigating the bureaucracy.
- klaudius 8y agoDoes just having links on a page (e.g. Google Maps link or FB profile) cause slow page load?
- pcr0 8y agoIf you're loading them asynchronously, no.
- klaudius 8y agoOn this page[1] it says that even links (e.g. Google Play links) might cause slow page load time. [1] https://crossborder.digital/how-to-test-your-page-loading-speed-in-china/
- nyuszika7h 8y agoIt sounds like the person writing this article was forced to mention a "unique feature" for each website and they basically just wrote the same thing worded differently for the first three.
- yorwba 8y agoI think they mean that linking to Google Play won't lead to users downloading your app, not that merely including the link will slow down page load. The same is true of embeds, e.g. YouTube videos will fail to load, but the rest of the site won't be affected by that. The article's headline focusing on speed is probably just SEO.
- realusername 8y agoWhy bother? There's no internet in China anyway, whatever hacks you are going to use, the result will be completely random at best and your website working or not there is just a matter of luck. Even the big IT companies can't make it work so why would you?
- straxorx 8y agothis is why you don't understand how important is china market is. China is getting better and bigger.
- realusername 8y agoThat's irrelevant with my comment, China does not have a real legal system, the CCP has full power. Whatever you are building will be blocked if moderately popular to let a local competitor take that space. All these certifications mentioned on this website have approximately the same value as the paper it's written on.
- chillacy 8y agoMy understanding is that this kind of thing happens within China too, business is run on relationships and guanxi, not contracts. You have 0% chance as a westerner. As a Chinese citizen your chances are only good insofar as you can network and maintain relationships with people.
- saagarjha 8y ago> There's no internet in China anyway Uh, what?
- realusername 8y agoChina just has a local Intranet and when you are lucky (and increasingly luckier every year) you can access some small websites on the Internet.
- fungi 8y agoif there is anything remotely dynamic in your app go with option 2. i've mainland proxied and cached the hell out of everything i can, warm the caches daily, but once the user starts interacting (eg search) then hitting our servers really bites randomly. usually not so bad for honkers server, but even that route can randomly drop off the face of the planet.
- fungi 8y agohmm, option 3 looks interesting. i would need to test it to have confidence in it (especially over problematic periods like golden week), but having your server in honkers is a big plus over the other side.
- stevespang 8y agoCan't wait for Elon Musk to put up his satellite constellation with broadband all over the world and see how the Chinese deal with that. Spread spectrum military style internet beamed down in cooperation with radio free Europe (radio free China) so censors have trouble blocking . . .
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- morkfromork 8y agoI want the opposite. I want to block China and Russia and a few other countries that constantly try to hack my site.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoLook into ASN blacklisting.
- gjs278 8y agoisn’t that literally security by obscurity?
- matthew-wegner 8y agoYou can block whole countries with the free CloudFlare tier. (Or give them CAPTCHA style challenges)
- slig 8y agoCan you now? A while ago it's possible to block countries in the free tier, but it was a bug and they reverted.
- laurent123456 8y agoWouldn't they just use a VPN to go around the block?
- miaklesp 8y agoYour site should be very important that everyone tries to hack it.
- int_19h 8y agoSo long as it has any sort of registration and hence user accounts, it's good enough to top up password lists.
- morkfromork 8y ago
- crazygringo 8y agoI'm really confused. I have a fairly international website geared towards English language learners, with Google Analytics and AdSense and links to share on Facebook, hosted on Digital Ocean here in NYC... and, without designing for it, China has been my #1 source of traffic and revenue for many years now, simply because they're the #1 largest population of English language learners. It seems to be working fine. I mean, maybe my share of Chinese traffic could be even bigger, but does anyone have any hard numbers showing this is a problem? Or are Chinese users aware of slow loads but just put up with it?
- chillacy 8y agoVPN usage is popular, even more so among the educated who might want to improve their English. That’s who you’re targeting anyways right?
- netheril96 8y agoThose who connect to their website through VPN will not show up with an IP inside China mainland.
- echevil 8y agoIf your website doesn't use anything that's being actively blocked by the firewall (e.g. Google CDN), it is most likely usable in China, although it'd be quite slow. I browse tons of foreign websites when I grew up in China. It's actually not a big issue if the website doesn't serve video.
- Elect2 8y agoAnalytics and Adsense are not blocked in China.
- edwinyzh 8y agoDon't get confused, the gov blocks websites with a clear purpose and your English learning website definitely is not on their blocking list.
- spectramax 8y agoI don't want to live in a world where the next superpower blocks websites as they suit them, suppress freedom of speech and journalism, exploit prisoners, religious segregation camps, employing social dystopian systems and is led by unimpeachable, unchallenged leader who has elected himself with a 1000-0 vote as perpetual president of the country. It is sad to see that the rest of the world has to bend down to serve this repressive state. I've been to China and the people there are the same as us - I despise the party, not the people. The next generation that grows up there will not have the perspective of what it means to live in a free democratic country.
- apostacy 8y ago> suppress freedom of speech, and journalism, ... We've lost the right to complain about Chinese censorship. We actually owe the Chinese an apology for criticizing them. They've clearly been vindicated for the 21st century. When New Zealand and Australia blocked some of the most popular websites on the Internet at the backbone, I think that was the last straw for the west making any claims to having the moral high ground. Google, Facebook, and the other de-facto governing bodies of our Internet flaunt their suppression of voices that they don't like. At least the Chinese government seems mostly to be about keeping public order. Companies like Google and Apple will ban your app in revenge for you not bowing to them, while simultaneously distributing Saudi Government wife-tracking apps[1]. And Google loves the Chinese government and wants very much to be in their good graces, and is selling out innocent people to do it. So really how are they any different? The Chinese are just about power, but they don't insult you with lies. They don't lie to you that it is in the name of security, or worse, in the name of morality. To be honest, I'd feel more comfortable using Chinese Internet, because at least their censorship is predictable, relatively fair, and only concerned with preventing the spread of fake news. You can be politically incorrect and rude if you want, and not worry about police showing up at your door, like in The UK and Germany. Unless you are legitimately making terroristic threats, it is very unlikely you will ever get the Chinese government visiting you at home. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19291458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19291458
- koboll 8y ago
- taf2 8y agoYeah no thanks.
- avinium 8y agoHas anyone registered an AWS China account without a Chinese company? The application process requires you to select a Chinese city/postcode.
- teknologist 8y agoChina - opening to the world. At least that's what they say...
- Proven 8y agoThe CCP have turned that country into a fascist hellhole. They should be thrown out of the WTO.
- zzzeek 8y agoI host sqlalchemy.org on Linode, it has a google analytics loader on it, and I've had several complaints that the website cannot be loaded in many regions of China.
- oefrha 8y agoIt's not GA which is not blocked in China; I think sqlalchemy.org itself somehow ended up on the GFW blocklist (beats me why that would happen). I'm in China right now, and $ curl -v http://sqlalchemy.org/ * Trying 45.33.79.102... * TCP_NODELAY set Then it just hangs. Meanwhile, my sites hosted in the same Linode datacenter (Newark, NJ) work fine.
- tedk-42 8y agoShame the entire thread turned into a anti china beatup. HN is going down the same path slashdot did. Rather than informative posts it is filled with opinionated speech likely from bot accounts.
- civilian 8y agoyou're greatly underestimating the number of opinionated HNers there are if you think the number of comments can only be explained by bots :-P and also, 6/4/1989 you bootlicker
- dang 8y agoIf you attack another user like that again, we will have to ban you, so please don't. You've mostly been a good commenter, so that shouldn't be hard. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- civilian 8y agosounds good, fair judgement
- dang 8y agoThis breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing without evidence. Please don't do that—it's one of the most toxic things we see here. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- tossawayonphine 8y agoof course my websites work in china. i get hitup dailey by suppliers.
- fxfan 8y agoCan I use a separate ip address for requests from china somehow?
- elamje 8y agoNot that this is a recommended solution, but VPNs work from inside of China. I lived with some Chinese students while I was exchanging and basically they said most people that want out of the Fire wall can just VPN out with no repercussions expected. Not that it’s ideal, but some commenters seem to believe that people in China have no access to the outside world which just isn’t true. Before the internet the USSR could censor effectively, but now it’s pretty hard with encryption being as good as it is. Of course there are people in China that don’t know that VPNs exist, but I think it’s an important nuance to mention that many people are able to have an open online experience.
- hw 8y agoDidn't China ban VPN or at least started to issue fines to people who were caught using VPNs? Unless they backtracked on that..
- PakG1 8y agoYes, that parent comment must be old information. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2109618/man-jailed-selling-vpns-evade-chinas-great-firewall https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/21... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2125326/man-jailed-51/2-years-fined-us76000-selling-vpn https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/21... https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/2180960/chinese-vpn-user-fined-accessing-overseas-websites-part-beijings-ongoing https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/2180960/chinese-vpn... As well, I think the Chinese government has demonstrated multiple times during "sensitive times" in recent years that they can make commercial VPN services nonfunctional at the snap of a finger. If a commercial VPN service is working, it is because of the Chinese government's mercy, not because of the commercial VPN's technological ingenuity. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see commercial VPN providers advertising that they are the best or only VPN service to work in China. I remember one time I saw a viral Astrill ad floating around that said something to the effect: "We're happy that our VPN service is working great for our customers. But please don't post that your VPN service is working great. We work really hard to develop new technologies and get around the Chinese firewall, and if you keep bragging about it, the Chinese government could find out, it will make it harder for our services to work." Super bad taste in my mouth. Come on, you know that the very first customers to download new clients are from the Chinese government working to figure out how to get it blocked. Hate this kind of disingenuous marketing. edit: I will say that it is true that most commercial VPN services do seem to be used for most of the year and work well enough without consequences; the law seems to exist, but does not always get enforced. Would be interesting to see if China starts ratcheting up the fines over time.
- yixiang 8y agoI'm Chinese. It's not that bad. * I've been hosting my Chinese blog in US vps since 2009 and it works fine. * I have Gitea hosted in US vps and it works fine too. * GoDaddy has Alipay (sort of China's PayPal) up for a long time. * ICP Licenses are easy to get (at least for Chinese) and typically take less a month. I've done it for my company's websites and my clients' websites. * ICP licenses are required only if you want to host your website in China. Hosting in China is ridiculously expensive and many Chinese go out of their way to host elsewhere. For 9$ a month you get 1 cpu, 1G ram and 1MBit bandwidth, which translates to 128kb/s. To make your website load, and load fast in China: * Remove Google fonts, Google cdn, resources from FB, twitter, etc. this should fix 95% of your problem. * Avoid well-known host providers (AWS, Vultr, Linode) if you can, they tend to get banned. * Get a host with CN2. I heard hosting in Hong Kong is fast too. It's only necessary if you really want your site to be lightning fast. As a Chinese, if I'm visiting your website and your website is in English, then I probably expect it to be slow, so...
- fungi 8y ago> Get a host with CN2. I heard hosting in Hong Kong is fast too. Tested Alibaba Cloud in honkers from Shenzhen and Guangzhou late last year for a couple weeks as a Shadow Socks host. Worked really well, <10milsec ping. That said, its not day to day that i've had probs with Honker <~> Mainland traffic. It's the seemingly random network performance degradation that bites.
- fireattack 8y agoWhat is CN2
- haxpor 8y agoThanks, I live in China too. I want to know is it easy to update ip address associated with ICP license? I seek an option to transfer from more expensive to cheaper vps solution and want to maintain icp license I already got.
- yixiang 8y agoAs far as I know, you can't do that, since your ICP license is tied to a host provider (like Aliyun), if you host your site somewhere else, you risk having your license revoked.
- chvid 8y ago"Sadly, it’s not so simple. If your app/website servers aren’t hosted from within China, then, for all intents and purposes, it’s blocked. I mean, it will probably technically load, but will be excruciatingly, unusably slow. And sometimes it will just not load at all for hours at a time." Is that really correct? And are there any sort of systematic measurements of that? I seem to remember from my travels in China that accessing my websites hosted in Denmark was ok, certainly not stellar, but better than Australia. (The rest of the advice: Don't use FB and Google - absolutely a good idea.)
- TheTruth1234 8y agoNo, I don't, actually.
- europsucks 8y agoIs there a service where you can test the performance of your web site from within China? Edit: Google knows https://geekflare.com/test-website-load-time-from-china/ https://geekflare.com/test-website-load-time-from-china/
- icedchocolate 8y agoHonestly, I wouldn’t make it available in China. I want to give them a reason to take that firewall down. I don’t want to make the prison that their government has turned their country into, a sustainable one.
- squishysquid 8y agothey don't have a reason though it functions as protectionism for their native IT industry. They have there own set of large tech companies in googles place. They have their own version of all these apps/webservices ect.
- jstanley 8y agoIf you block Chinese people from viewing your website, you're only hurting Chinese people. The government doesn't give a shit about your website or your users. The internet is a place that can exist without borders, there's no reason for us to voluntarily erect any.
- vorpalhex 8y agoThe government is ultimately at the mercy of its people. If they can't access the things they want, then that will add to their issues with the government.
- tilolebo 8y agoMy 2 cents running your app in China: * make it as decoupled as possible from your core infra. What you spare on infra costs caused by redundancy, you will spend in maintenance time, outage mitigation, etc. * no synchronous call going out of China mainland, otherwise you become dependent of the Great Firewall and that is not something you want * expect lower quality of documentation and support
- trendingtees 8y agoFrankly I might not allow it to be accessible China. I would like to provide them with an excuse to accept that down firewall. Idon't desire to earn the jail their administration has turned into their country right into, a renewable individual.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Can_Not 8y agoI really want the opposite, I want Google Cloud to stop billing me for Chinese users I don't have. Apparently the technology to bill me extra for Chinese bandwidth is not available for making firewall rules.
- butytho 8y agoIt’s really interesting how many HN users continuously engage in whataboutism and praise China every time any criticism of China comes up. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/red-astroturf-chinese-government-makes-millions-of-fake-social-media-posts/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/red-a... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103136
- vfulco2 8y agoI remain completely disgusted and confused why websites hosted on AWS S3 (in BJ) by fully registered firms with valid ICPs are still banned. I have to use 10x the computing power that I need and I could load additional tools in its place. That and the lack of AWS Amplify being offered really crushes innovation here. (Shanghai based entrepreneur)