Why Website Performance Matters in China

Only 25% of foreign websites are accessible in China; 20% take more than 20 seconds to load, and 55% cannot be accessed.

We tested the top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and found that only 14 companies’ websites were accessible in China.

The internet in China is one of the fastest in the world. It is built for over a billion daily users who demand and get fast performance. The internet in China has been and remains a major technical success story. Poor-performing overseas websites do not meet the needs of Chinese businesses or consumers.

The internet is a global infrastructure that costs hundreds of billions of dollars to build and operate, much of which is driven by energy consumption. Improving performance is therefore both an enhancement of customer experience and a resource- and energy-efficiency gain.

In this sense, performance optimisation is both a green initiative and a commercial one.

Internet performance

Global Routing Inefficiencies

Public internet traffic from China to the rest of the world is routed through Japan and Taiwan (not Hong Kong), then on to North America before reaching any overseas servers. This does significantly increase response times.

Hosting in Hong Kong is often seen as a fast way to connect to the Chinese internet. For internet providers in Asia, the route from Hong Kong to mainland China via the Pacific Ring passes through Japan and Taiwan. For U.S. internet providers, the route from Hong Kong to North America then crosses the Pacific Ocean again, entering China via Japan and Taiwan, making it one of the slowest internet connections in the world. This service is often unavailable in overseas data centres operating in Hong Kong. It requires an agreement with Chinese network carriers..

Limited International Bandwidth

The Pacific submarine cables have physical capacity limits for the traffic they can carry. Congestion is common, especially during business hours and peak usage periods.

To overcome this problem, host your website's large files and/or the website itself in Japan and Taiwan. Ensure the hosting provider has a direct connection to mainland China; not all do.

Avoid hosting services in Hong Kong unless your service provider has a direct internet connection to mainland China.

Content Restrictions

The Pacific submarine cables have physical capacity limits for the traffic they can carry. Congestion is common, especially during business hours and peak usage periods.

• International social media
• International multimedia platforms, e.g. YouTube
• Third-party system and services, e.g. Google, recapture
• International hosting services, e.g. CDNs

Overseas DNS Performance

DNS resolution for overseas-registered domains is slow and unreliable in China.

Your domain name's DNS records “look up” is taking too long (over 250ms) for the Chinese internet (requiring a response time of 100ms) and resulting in your website being reported to the user as “not found”.

To address this, use the China Name Server (DNS) service.

As of 2022, overseas companies have been able to use Name Server (DNS) service in China, provided the domain is purchased through a Chinese ISP.

Multi-media contents

Image Size and Media Optimisation

Images on many websites are significantly larger than their displayed size. Oversized images increase download time, server load, and degrade performance in China.

For example, if the maximum banner image width is 1,800px, ensure the image is resized to 1,800px. It will not change your website's appearance, but it will load faster.

Overly large image sizes are prevalent in online content. It is simple to correct.

Overly large image sizes are prevalent in online content. It is simple to correct.

• Improve your internet performance
• Reduce user “bouncing”
• Reduce internet usage. If we all did this, the internet would run faster and require less power

Mobile and tablet considerations

Image optimisation is even more critical on mobile networks, which typically have lower bandwidth and higher latency.

Given CDN service issues in China, we recommend that you control image sizing on your website in HTML, e.g., by adding the “picture” tag.

Prioritised image loading (Lazy Loading)

Images should load from top to bottom, displaying the most important content first. This improves perceived performance and reduces unnecessary data transfer.

Third-Party Resources and Embedded Services

Modern websites often load content from many external sources. While convenient, this can severely impact performance in China.

Many of these services are blocked in China or slowed to the point of being unusable.

To overcome these problems, move/copy the content to your own website, removing the need for third-party resources.

Fonts and External Libraries

Services such as Google Fonts can take an extremely long time to load in China, sometimes blocking text rendering entirely.

CDN Dependencies

CDNs are effective for large global platforms but are often unnecessary and slow for typical business websites serving China.

Embedded Social Media

Overseas social platforms are blocked in China. Embedded social feeds often result in missing content or broken layouts.

Block Chinese IP addresses through your web hosting service provider

Malware and Bot traffic are prevalent worldwide. This is where people send many messages to your website.

Your website hosting provider blocked this traffic. In doing so, it also blocks traffic from Chinese social media. Chinese social media often includes links to overseas websites. This is generally good, as it indirectly promotes your company. This traffic is frequently mistaken for malware or bot traffic and is blocked. For example, WeChat opens a website inside its platform using the same source IP address, which can result in WeChat being blocked.