Hosting a website in China, meaning your server is located in mainland China, can be seen as messy, difficult and extremely confusing for most people. However, in fact, the process is quite straight forward and the hosting service provider in China all provide ICP registration service to their customer in addition to the hosting service.
With this article, we aim to give you a primer on ICP registration in China and guide you through the whole registration process.
Introduction of ICP & ISP
According to the Telecommunication Regulation of the People’s Republic of China (2004) and Regulation on Internet Information Service (2000), the internet players in China is divided into two major groups, one being non-commercial internet content provider (“ICP”) and the other being commercial internet service provider (“ISP”) (Cable or internet connecting service provider such as China Telecom or similarly Verizon in the US is within the group of ISP, but for purposes of this article we will not touch upon cable or internet connecting service provider).
ISP includes those companies who provide services to other internet players online, such as a hosting company or platform company. For example, Taobao.com is a huge ISP because it provides selling platform for other entities or individuals. ISP requires licenses to operate depending on the nature of its services.
On the contrary, ICP does not provide service to other entities or individuals online and only require a registration to operate. ICP creates contents online to be viewed by others.
One may ask whether selling products constitutes ISP or ICP. Selling products on your own website does not require ISP license because you are not providing services to others. But if you allow other parties to sell on your website, it constitute ISP.
What is ICP registration exactly?
ICP registration allows your domain name to be connected with the IP address. Normally, you may visit a site using IP address hosted in China without ICP registration but it is not feasible or convenient for viewers to remember the IP address of your website. Also, in some situations where one host may have various websites on one server (namely virtual hosts), typing in the IP address just won’t render the proper websites. So the ICP registration kicks in and allows memorable domain names to be connected or attached to the IP address. One IP address (or one host) may attach as many domains as you want.
The main purpose of government requiring ICP registration is to make sure owners of each domain name can be contacted in case of any bad situations and to facilitate information collection for site owners and operators.
Is it limited to .cn domains?
ICP registration is not limited to a specific kind of domains. As long as your websites are hosted in China and you want your domains to point to this host, you need to obtain ICP registrations. Therefore, no matter what domain name extensions you are using, you are required to obtain ICP registrations.
Who administers the ICP registration?
The PRC Ministry of Industry & Information is the government agency who administers the ICP registration. The actual registration function is delegated to provincial or even prefectural level (in case of major cities) of Administration of Industry & Information.
Each provincial level of Administration of Industry & Information has jurisdiction on entities which are registered in this province or individuals whose residences are within this particular provinces.
Who is eligible to apply for ICP registration?
According to the law, only entities or individual residing in mainland China are allowed to apply for ICP registrations. Foreign entities are not eligible per se. Whether foreign individuals are eligible is a question of law depending on the location where the foreign individual is residing in China. For most part of China, I should say it is not possible for foreign individuals. But in some parts of China such as Shanghai where the Chinese green card program is implemented, applying for ICP by this foreign green card holder might be legally possible though no one has ever done that before.
If foreign entities or individuals are not eligible, what can they do? If they have domestic affiliated WFOE or JV, that would be great and easy to obtain an ICP registration using those entities. But if there is no affiliate, foreign entities or individuals have to set up a partnership with a Chinese company or individual in order to register. ICP registration creates only liability, not right. So finding someone trustworthy to do such job will not hurt any interest of the foreign entities or individuals.
What are the processes, requirements and time frames?
Nowadays, almost all hosting service providers offer free services of filing ICP registration which is the recommended measure of filing ICP registration by the Ministry of Information & Technology. Applicant (a.k.a. site owners) will only need to follow hosting service providers’ instructions to complete the process. Doing such registration thing at http://www.miibeian.gov.cn on your own is a daunting task, too cumbersome and not time-efficient.
Generally speaking, required documents include a registration form, the ID of site owner and responsible person, ID of the company (in case of a company applicant), a statement of authenticity issued by the site owner and a picture of site owner holding ID for verification purposes.
Once the government receives the documents, they legally have 20 days to review and decide whether to issue a registration number. In reality, the time is very short. I once finished the ICP registration within three days by the assistance of Aliyun.
When a registration number is issued, your domain names can point to the IP address as specified in the registration form. On the website, you will need to include the registration number, normally in the footer area for compliance purposes, for example, as follows by Microsoft’s Bing service in China:
In conclusion, it is not as difficult as you think to obtain an ICP registration. All you need to do is find someone in China to file on your behalf if you are a foreign entity or individual and the hosting company will do the rest for you.