Your school website is usually the first place where prospective families, current parents, alumni, and faculty learn about your programs, credentials, and culture.
If your website is slow or inaccessible in China (like over 90% of global websites) you could be excluding students’ families who reside or travel there, prospective staff or partners, and even alumni who’ve returned home.
Slow loading times or non-functional pages damage user experience and create a negative first impression of your institution’s credibility and professionalism.
This guide will explore why your school’s website might not work in China, and options to optimize your site.
TL;DR
China compatibility: Over 90% of global websites load slowly in China, if at all, and are often missing key functionality like forms, videos, and more.
Primary obstacles: Websites often fail to load fully because of incompatibilities with third-party resources like Google APIs and infrastructural incompatibilities like content being stored too long a distance away from end users.
Potential solutions: To resolve code-based and infrastructure-based incompatibilities between your website and China’s internet environment, you need to consider third-party resources on your website and the means by which you’re delivering the content to the end user (i.e. a Content Delivery Network (CDN)).
Ongoing maintenance: The Chinese internet environment changes frequently, making regular testing and updates essential.
Here are two tools you can try out to see how your site loads in China:
Global speed test - test your site from 18 servers around the world including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
Visual speed test - watch and compare your site as it loads in real-time outside versus inside China.
Many schools, including K–12, international boarding schools, and universities, either currently serve or aim to serve Chinese students. Even if your institution isn’t actively recruiting, there may be an existing or potential future population of Chinese students and families who need reliable access to your site for admissions and day-to-day information.
Alumni from your school might have returned to China. Ensuring your website loads quickly and fully allows them to stay connected, access alumni networks, donate, or participate in online events.
Faculty or staff may travel, collaborate, or attend conferences in China. Moreover, your school might seek academic or corporate partnerships with Chinese institutions. Having a functional website in China improves accessibility and credibility among potential partners.
Parents traveling or living in China often rely on your website for updates, resources, or direct communication with faculty. If your website underperforms, they can become disconnected or frustrated, risking the overall parent-school relationship.
A fast and fully functional site in China supports your school’s reputation as a forward-thinking, globally aware institution. Reliable digital access can help you stand out among competitor schools that remain inaccessible.
While some websites are officially blocked in China, most others simply just don’t work well because they’re not optimized for the Chinese internet. Those that suffer from poor performance in China do so due to two primary reasons: code incompatibility and infrastructure limitations as it is specifically related to the China internet ecosystem.
Websites built with third-party resources – such as Google APIs, Facebook trackers, YouTube videos and hundreds of lesser-known incompatible resources – encounter delays or even fail to load in China.
Some of these resources may be blocked by China, while others are slow-loading or non-performant because of China’s internet environment.
When a browser tries to retrieve blocked or restricted content, it gets “stuck,” leading to delays of 30 seconds or more.
Hosting your website outside of China creates additional latency due to the physical distance between your servers and the end users in China.
Even with global CDNs, the majority do not have Points of Presence (PoPs) by default inside China, and so the distance still slows down site performance. Even if they do have Points of Presence inside of China, they’re not automatically included in your CDN package as you would still have to fulfill certain prerequisites in order to leverage them.
If you’re not prepared for these challenges, students, alumni, parents or partners in China will likely experience slow page loads or incomplete functionality, making it difficult to showcase your school’s strengths.
Many school websites include embedded elements such as Google Maps on a contact page, YouTube or Vimeo videos for school tours, and various analytics or ad trackers (e.g., from Facebook, Instagram, or Google). These often load fine elsewhere in the world but are restricted or slow in China, causing bottlenecks that can impact your site speed and functionality.
It would be easy to think that by removing the obvious third-party resources (like Google Maps or YouTube videos) from your school’s website, the site would consequently load fast and fully in China.
However, the nature of China’s internet ecosystem means that the way third-party resources work in China differs and evolves so there is no one-off list or means to edit these resources. Changes will likely have to be made on an ongoing basis.
Chinafy is a specialized solution that can identify third-party resources that are causing web performance issues for your site in China.
Chinafy will then replace, remove, or optimize incompatible resources on a China-friendly version of your site.
What this means for your school website is that you can maintain the existing global site while simultaneously optimizing it for China visitors.
When a user accesses your website from China, the browser usually has to retrieve files from servers located outside of China, sometimes as far away as the US or Europe. This leads to slower load times, higher latency, or even timeouts, despite your site performing just fine in the rest of the world.
Misconceptions around CDNs tend to fall into two categories. Some people think:
That all global CDNs should make websites run well in China by default.
Many "global CDNs" don't have Points of Presence (PoPs) in China because using a CDN there requires meeting specific prerequisites. As a result, these CDNs often fail to address the infrastructure challenges faced by global websites.
That using only a CDN will make your website compatible with China’s internet environment.
CDNs don’t resolve code- or file-based issues relating to blocked or restricted third-party resources that could lead to your site still loading slowly or failing to load altogether.
Using an onshore CDN will store and deliver your website’s content closer to end users in China, but because the servers are within mainland China, there are regulatory prerequisites to using them, including:
Obtaining an ICP license
Establishing a local entity or partnering with a local provider
Registering your website with the Public Security Bureau (PSB)
Remaining compliant with China’s content regulations, such as data localization.
The decision to host your school website within China or use a China CDN is an organization-level decision. Irrespectively, it’s important to remember that it is not a silver bullet to a fast-performing website, as third-party resources can remain an issue.
Whether your school's site is hosted offshore or onshore, Chinafy can be bolted onto your existing technical stack to achieve faster loading times, and more functional website experience.
Similarly to a CDN, hosting your site on a server physically located within mainland China can lower latency. As with using a China CDN, however, it would likely be detrimental to center your school’s site in China if its students and other users are based elsewhere.
One of the common misconceptions of hosting onshore is that it’s simply a case of replicating the site on a server within China. The reality is that a move to an onshore host typically requires a simplification of the school’s website, in addition to legal and regulatory requirements, as even China-hosted sites face functionality issues when certain files or code conflict with China’s internet.
If it makes sense to do so, hosting your school’s website onshore has certain prerequisites:
ICP License: An ICP license or filing is mandatory if you want to host within China. This generally requires having a local Chinese entity or working with a local partner.
Legal structure: Investigate whether forming a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE) or partnering with a local Chinese company is feasible for your school.
Ongoing compliance: Even with onshore hosting, be prepared to continually monitor changes in policies that may affect your content or domain.
Optimizing your school website for China often requires a blend of technical know-how, ongoing optimizations and constant monitoring. This can be resource-intensive, especially if your internal IT team is already stretched thin.
Chinafy often gets compared to CDNs but Chinafy is not a CDN. Chinafy is the only China web compatibility solution able to intelligently identify, replace or remove blocked or slow resources for your visitors in China on an ongoing basis so that your site loads fast, and fully.
Generates a version of your website for China visitors without affecting your current site.
Combines both in-person and platform-level features to detect and replace blocked or slow resources that cause loading delays.
Speeds up content delivery with a China-friendly CDN.
Typically takes only a couple of weeks to implement with minimal IT involvement. Variability will depend on the complexity of the site.
Chinafy is also compatible with most, if not all CMS platforms that you are currently using as our technology sits as a layer above your website.
Whether you’re using Chinafy or not, your school website’s performance in China requires continual attention as China’s internet ecosystem can evolve and new updates to your global site might introduce new third-party resources or code elements that slow your site down in China.
If you’re not using Chinafy, here are two quick tips to stay on top of changes that could impact your site in China:
Periodic testing: Run speed tests - both synthetic and real user monitoring (RUM) - from multiple locations in China (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou) on a frequent basis.
Stay informed on policy changes: Subscribe to relevant updates or rely on a trusted partner to keep you compliant with changing regulations.
Optimizing your school website for China is a no-brainer to ensure that it remains accessible, fast, and fully functional for anyone trying to learn more about your institution, including current families, alumni, or prospective staff and students.
When families or staff visit your website and it simply works, your school is better positioned to foster trust and confidence among all your stakeholders in China and beyond. If you’d like to talk to us about your website, get in touch with Chinafy today.
Disclaimer: This guide is informational and does not constitute legal advice. Chinafy is not a legal or corporate advisory entity, and, given that every business is different, we suggest consulting with your internal legal counsel if you would like advice on any legal or compliance-related concerns, or alternatively we can connect you with one of our partners.