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So you want your app/website to work in China

chanind.github.io

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Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#91

Post by yixiang »

I'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...

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#92

Post by apostacy »

whatshisface wrote: post #60
apostacy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gr…

> 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. If the Chinese internet isn't that bad, then Google isn't bad for collaboration, and then the indictment of the West doesn't work. Likewise if Google is bad for wanting to turn in people to the Chinese government, then China is…

> Now, if you want to say, "they're both evil," fine. Evil is a binary thing, so it naturally sidesteps the argument about who is stepping on your toes and who is sawing them off. Still, Chariman Xao sure is holding a sharp saw over there...

I should have used a sarcasm tag. YES, I am saying they're both evil. And I'm disgusted that American's are being just as bad as the Chinese government. And if I must choose, I'd rather have the Chinese style of honest authoritarianism than the smug and dishonest authoritarianism that is encroaching on the west.

I'm not a Chinese shill. I used to be proud of my country. I used to actually admire Google. And now they are licking the boots of the Chinese government.

There are almost certainly innocent people who are dying in prison camps because of indifference, if not outright assistance of our Silicon Valley robber barons. When American corporations assisted in other genocides during WWII, we didn't invite their executives to give freaking TED talks.

And the smugness. At least the oil executives and weapons dealers who funded both sides of bloody wars didn't preach to us about how woke they were while they were doing it.

And on top of everything else, a large part of the tech community celebrates censorship now.

So please forgive me for seeing hypocrisy. (that was sarcasm).

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#93

Post by chairmanwow »

victornomad wrote: post #4

My 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…

My biggest frustration while browsing in China was reCAPTCHA. Most websites would load fine, but then they would detect that I was in a new location and this would trigger their account protection bullshit and ask me to complete a reCAPTCHA that...wouldn’t load. This happened ALL THE TIME and is just excruciating.

Sometimes there wouldn’t even be UI that would load to indicate something was wrong. Logins would just fail with cryptic messages.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#94

Post by apostacy »

spectramax wrote: post #61
apostacy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gr…

I was afraid that my comment will turn into USA vs. China. or _____ vs. China. That is all we do here on HN. Every single time anyone criticizes China, there is a preposterous tendency to "soften" the criticism by showing examples of other countries doing one or two things - pick and choose your favorite thing. I am honestly frustrated with openly criticizing a regime, doesn't matter who, without resorting to compari…

Sorry my tone was all off. I was attempting to be sarcastic and call out the hypocrisy of westerners. My defense of China was purely ironic.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#95

Post by netheril96 »

chillacy wrote: post #48
crazygringo wrote: post #45

I'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 me…

VPN usage is popular, even more so among the educated who might want to improve their English. That’s who you’re targeting anyways right?

Those who connect to their website through VPN will not show up with an IP inside China mainland.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#96

Post by freshm087 »

alexcnwy wrote: post #86
spectramax wrote: post #47

I 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…

the internet will become impossible to censor (for everyone - it’s already easy for the rich to avoid censorship) when satellite connections become cheaper / faster / more accessible

In many countries sending something over a satellite requires registration (which can be used for control subsequently), or even a license. Unless it will be a type of technology which is very hard to block, and locate, I wouldn't expect it to beat censorship.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#97

Post by freshm087 »

apostacy wrote: post #55
spectramax wrote: post #47

I 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…

> 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 gr…

To be fair, there's a grain of truth in this downvoted comment. Western elites increasingly turning in favor of censorship using blurry definitions of "hate speech", "extremist materials", "terrorist propaganda", "fake news" to persuade societies to surrender free speech. It nevertheless doesn't make Chinese censorship less ugly.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#98

Post by fungi »

yixiang wrote: post #91

I'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…

> 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, 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.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#99

Post by Elect2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #45

I'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 me…

Analytics and Adsense are not blocked in China.

Re: So you want your app/website to work in China

#100

Post by fungi »

ashton314 wrote: post #2

I 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?

This 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).
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