For any given business looking to expand this often means going global and with an online audience of 384 million (end of 2009) coupled with the continued growth and prominence of its economy, China is an attractive prospect.

Launching a website for a Chinese audience though is not simply a case of translating it into Mandarin and then waiting for the numbers and the dollars to start rolling in. In this series of posts, I will look at a few areas that website owners need to consider when looking at targeting their business to an overseas market. I will specifically reference China and social networking sites (built in Drupal) since that it where my experience lies, but the same considerations would equally apply to other markets and other types of websites, particularly in countries such as Korea and Japan, that have their own localised takes on the internet.

The Walled Garden

Perhaps the first thing to mention is the fact that the internet in China is very different to the internet we know in the UK. We have a perception in the West of the internet as being a borderless, open and free entity, but it’s not quite the same in China. Think of the internet in China as a walled garden. There are of course ways to climb the garden wall and gorge on the outside internet at ones own peril, but the majority of Chinese people are content to remain within its safe confines.

What goes on inside those walls as we know is strictly monitored and controlled by Chinese authorities (‘harmonised’ is the word used in China), but the internet to be found here is a sub-culture all of its own that doesn’t necessarily follow the trends or fads that we are accustomed to in the West and isn’t built around the familiar likes of FaceBook, Google, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter. In fact it’s often built on clones of these sites that take the bits they like, discard the bits they don’t and then add additional features to suit the tastes and needs of the locals.

Play ball

The first thing to mention in thinking about setting up shop in China is a fairly obvious statement to make - to do business in China, you need to play ball with the Chinese authorities.

In a recent government white paper China’s position is made clear 'Within Chinese territory the Internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty. The Internet sovereignty of China should be respected and protected.' And if you don’t like that then you’ll just have to do what Google did and suspend services in China.

If you are hosting your site in China be prepared to apply for an ICP license, which is not the easiest thing to get especially if you are promoting the social networking aspects of your site. If you do get your license and set up your social networking site, also be prepared for the authorities to come knocking one day and ask you to temporarily suspend all user interaction as was the case for us during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Don’t worry though Chinese users know the score and will read between the lines of your ‘Sorry, we are currently down for a few days of essential maintenance’ message and long term damage to your user base should be minimal.

You can of course host your site outside of China, but be warned, all externally hosted sites enter China through one data centre – think M25 on a bank holiday weekend and you’ll get the picture, things can get very slow especially if you are serving up rich media.

It’s also easier for those in power to block, filter or monitor your site and the Chinese are very, very adept at this. Remember that references (harmless or otherwise) to Tiannanmen, Taiwan, the Dalai Lama or other such touchy topics will get you noticed and you certainly don’t want that. You can easily control your own content, but if you are allowing user generated content then you’ll definitely want to pre-moderate. It also looks likely that in the near future anonymous comments will not be allowed on any sites in China and possibly even that users will need to register for sites using their national ID number.

The next couple of years will be interesting in China as the authorities try to tighten their grip on the internet, whilst at the same time there is a ground swell of Chinese netizens looking for freedom of expression and openness on the web as epitomised by the Grass Mud Horse movement of recent years.

In the second part of this series, I’ll talk about how to actually go about localising your site for Chinese users.

About the Author

Ewan Andrews has been working in the China and Hong Kong region for the last 5 years as user experience designer for a number of large-scale educational projects using the Drupal framework.

Update: read part two of Ewan's blog