Regulations in China

  • Article

General Regulation

Key legislation, law enforcement and government organizations including the National People's Congress, Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, State Council, Cyberspace Administration of China, MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), MPS (Ministry of Public Security) and MNS (Ministry of National Security) play as key stakeholders on specific ICT and cyber security regulations and laws.

  • The National People's Congress and Standing Committee of the National People's Congress are the key organizations to approve China laws, such as China Anti-Terrorism Law and Cybersecurity Law.
  • The State Council and its relevant department, e.g. MIIT, normally develop and approve regulations in ICT and emerging cloud service areas.
  • MPS and MNS are the law enforcement agencies who focus to prevent and enforce laws against illegal actions, while MPS also publish their own regulations for enforcement.

To comply the regulations, the experience of purchasing (such as ICP for registering a web site, sign up for a public account …etc.) might be different vs. the experience globally. This only provides a basic background, for updated and official laws and regulations, please refer to each China government organization’s office public announcements.

ICP (Internet Content Provider) License & Filling

For websites hosted in China, there are two types of registrations/permits required by Chinese regulation for ICPs ICP license and ICP filing issued by MIIT or its provincial branches. The differences between ICP license and ICP filing are:

  • ICP filing is for non-commercial websites which is for Websites are purely informational and provides information free of charge. It shows as 京 ICP 备 12345678 号, "京" represents Beijing
  • ICP license is for commercial websites, which covers any website which may derive direct income from providing online advertising, texts, images, audio, video, apps, etc. or providing information search services, information community platform, instant message services, and information protection services. It shows as 京 ICP 证 12345678 号, “京" represents Beijing, add another example for a different province would be even more complete.

The application requirement and time taken vary and are subject to each provincial government. Taking the process for business registered in Shanghai City as an example illustrated below. The required details by each provincial government can be found here.Please note that the relevant application websites are only available in Chinese version here

icp-process

Public Security Registration

Once obtained the filing/license above, ICPs shall continue to apply for filing at local police station within 30 days. Users shall directly go through the process defined by the station without 21Vianet’s involvement in between. For more information, please go to Internet Security Management Service Platform

required information