Is Your Website Visible in China

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the question of whether or not your website needs to be hosted within China in order for it to be seen within China. So I thought I should write this article to help clarify.

 

First off, why wouldn’t your website be visible from China? In 2003 the Chinese Government launched the Golden Shield Project which is more commonly known to the rest of the world as the Great Firewall of China. The purpose of this software is to censor and restrict sites that the Chinese Government views as defamatory to subversive such as news sites that offer coverage of the recent Hong Kong protests or any documentation of human rights abuse within China such as the Tiananmen Square protests.

 

If your website is hosted on a server which is located outside of China, there is no way you can be 100% sure that your website won’t be blocked regardless of the content that you publish. However if you use the following guidelines you can minimise your chances of getting blocked:

 

• Use a VPS or dedicated server with a unique IP address. If you are using shared hosting, if someone else with the same IP address is blocked, your website is collateral damage
• Avoid publishing political content
• Avoid posting sensitive news. One way to judge whether a piece of news can be published is to go to search Chinese news website and if they published it, it’s safe.
• No gambling or pornographic content

 

You can test whether your site can be seen from within China by using one of these handy website tools:

 

websitepulse.com

 

greatfirewallofchina.org

 

So in summary hosting your website outside of China does not mean that it can’t be viewed inside China and it is unlikely that it would be blocked unless your content contravenes the guidelines listed above.

 

However even if your site can be seen from within China there is still another potential issue – it could be very slow to download for your Chinese audience. A way to resolve this problem is to host your site on a China based server. If you would like more information on hosting your website in China then please give us a call on 6124 9245.