TL;DR: Sanity.io is a headless CMS. Partly because Sanity’s infrastructure relies on Google Cloud and CDN nodes outside of mainland China, Sanity-powered sites can sometimes load slowly or incompletely when accessed from within the country. This also includes the Sanity Studio editor interface. With the right optimization approach, like using Chinafy, global sites built with Sanity can be made fast, accessible, and fully functional in China without changing your existing tech stack.

What is Sanity.io?

Sanity.io is a modern, open-source, headless Content Management System (CMS) built for structured content delivery across digital platforms. Unlike traditional CMS platforms that tightly couple content and presentation, Sanity decouples the two, enabling flexible content distribution to websites, apps, and more via APIs.

Key features:

Sanity Studio: A customizable, open-source editing interface built with React, offering a real-time collaborative experience for content creators.

Real-time updates & APIs: Enables fast, dynamic content delivery with structured APIs.

Trusted by leading companies: Organizations like Expedia, Shopify, and Figma use Sanity to manage and scale their content workflows.

What does it mean for a site to “work” in China?

From a performance perspective, we consider a website “functional” when users in China can load it fully within 3–5 seconds and interact with all intended features, like content, images, dynamic components, and more.

If a page loads slowly, partially, or breaks entirely, it’s not delivering a consistent or usable experience for users in China.

Does Sanity.io work in China?

Short answer: Not reliably.

Why websites built with Sanity struggle in China

Here’s how a typical webpage loads:

Browser requests an HTML document

HTML points to resources (CSS, JS, images, etc.)

Browser fetches and parses those resources

Page renders

But in China, many global services and infrastructure providers – especially those hosted on platforms like Google Cloud – are inaccessible or extremely slow. This includes Sanity’s primary CDN and API endpoints hosted on cdn.sanity.io, which run on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

The key issues with websites built with Sanity are:

CDN limitations: Sanity uses a global CDN, but the closest points of presence to China are in Hong Kong and Mumbai, with no nodes inside mainland China.

Blocked or delayed resources: Sanity-hosted assets often load slowly or not at all, leading to broken images, empty dynamic sections, or completely failed page loads.

Sanity Studio issues: As a React app relying on GCP APIs, the Sanity Studio editor can become effectively unusable in China, stalling or failing to load entirely for local team members.

See below a waterfall chart for a site built with Sanity.io. This site takes around 11 seconds to load fully in Beijing, China. You can see from the waterfall the comparatively longer load times (7132ms and 6100ms respectively) for Sanity’s CDN files, highlighted in yellow.

Source: webpagetest.org

How to make Sanity.io sites work in China

If your business has a presence in China, or your global website needs to be accessible to users in mainland China, there are typically two paths:

Option 1: Rebuild and host in China

Ensure you meet the prerequisites (ICP license, local entity e.g., WFOE or joint venture, compliance with regulations like PIPL and cybersecurity laws.)

Set up onshore infrastructure

Manage ongoing compliance and hosting within mainland China

Optimize third party resources with a solution like Chinafy

Even with an onshore site hosted in Mainland China, you may still run into web performance issues if the right optimizations aren’t in place. Chinafy works with both onshore and offshore websites to optimize compatibility for China visitors.

Read more about hosting onshore in Mainland China vs. offshore

Option 2: Optimize your existing Sanity site with Chinafy

If you’d prefer to maintain your current hosting setup while making your site work in China, Chinafy offers a bolt-on, low-touch solution.

Here’s how Chinafy works:

Generates a version of your website for China visitors without affecting your current Sanity-based site.

Identifies and remediates blocked or slow resources, such as handling assets stored on cdn.sanity.io.

Adds a China-friendly CDN without changing your current hosting set-up.

Chinafy routes China-IP-based traffic to the China-optimized version of your site without impacting global traffic which will still see your existing Sanity-based site.

Chinafy then keeps your China-optimized site in sync with your global one, so that any changes to content are reflected accordingly.

Sanity.io is a powerful CMS but performance in China is a common hurdle due to infrastructure and code limitations. With Chinafy, you don’t have to choose between your preferred tech stack and your global audience.

Ready to optimize your Sanity.io site for China?

Let’s talk. Book a consultation to explore how Chinafy can help make your Sanity site faster, more accessible, and fully functional in China without overhauling your CMS.