The government has announced that they wish to further enhance the authenticity, accuracy of domain name registration information. As part of this initiative all .CN registrations (any domain that ends in .CN) now require additional documentation to be submitted together with registrations.
The official announcement about the new additional registration requirements is on the CNNIC website here http://www.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2010/01/14/5766.htm. We also have further information available on our own site at http://icp.computersolutions.cn
ICP Licensing Requirements
All websites hosted in China are required to register for an internet content provider (ICP) license, this is also known as a 备案 (Bei An).
An ICP license or 备案 is basically a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to operate a website in mainland China.
All websites must clearly display the 备案 number on their homepage.
ICP licenses can be obtained for free at the Ministry of Information website - http://www.miibeian.gov.cn (Chinese only).
Clients can register an ICP licence via our online forms. (English/ Chinese).
The Ministry of Information Site is unfortunately only available in Chinese.
Note that Application for an ICP license requires a valid Chinese business license.
Businesses can register multiple websites under a single license number (or multiple numbers if new website licenses are required at a later date).
Once the application is submitted to the MII, we will be asked by them to confirm the information, and it is submitted to the Shanghai Bureau for approval.
It can take anything from a few minutes to a couple of weeks for the application to be approved. We recommend that if registration is urgent, you avoid doing so around major Chinese holidays (Spring Festival, National Day, etc), as submissions typically take longer around those times.
If an application is rejected, reasons will be sent to the applicants email address for further modifications and re-submission.
Typically applications are rejected due to incorrect information being supplied, rather than other reasons.
To avoid any issues, we prefer to handle the application process for our clients.
Clients will need to provide us with the relevant application information in a timely manner so that we can assist you with applying for the license.
We are required by the government to regularly check that all our clients comply with this requirement.
If a license is not displayed on the website, or the license number has some discrepancies, eg is an incorrect/invalid number, your site is liable be turned off without prior warning, and will display our ICP registration requirement page.
If your site has been disabled in this manner, you will need to contact our support staff, and have us confirm that a valid license number has been added to the site before we are allowed to re-enable your website. We cannot make any exceptions to these procedures, so please make sure that your site is fully compliant with Chinese law to avoid unnecessary difficulty.
Click here to read our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about ICP licensing and registration.
