The now famous post by Google regarding their new approach to China is a must read for anyone planning to host in China. As a company operating in China, we are glad that Google brings to light the practices and length that China is willing to go in order to police the Internet.
While on the surface it seem that business practices in China is increasingly capitalistic, business driven, there is an under current that if you do business in China you do it their way. This is especially so in matters dear to the central ideology which, least we forgot, is still communism.
For the longest time we tried to explained that in order to host a website in China, one need to register the site with the authority and obtain an ICP number. Many think it was unthinkable or we are joking until their site got shutdown. Then they think we are to blame.
Recently, China decided to step up their policing of the Internet and ordered the shut down of datacenter and inspected individual server. Without notice. Can you imagine something like this happen in the datacenter where you host your server?
Well, it can happen in China. In fact this is not the first time we encountered such cases in our operation history.
We had client with racks of servers serving hotel operation across China affected for more than a day! We appreciate that they understanding that things like this happens in China.
SLA? Sure the datacenter can give you a SLA. But when the government official come knocking, whose side do you think they will stand? No one says “no” to the government. No one. (Until Google maybe)
If even Google is not spared, be assured that your server hosted in China has the possibility of being monitored if need be.
There will be customers who do not understand and decided to pull out thinking we are bullshitting them. We had long since decided our approach to China. Worry less about losing customer and helping sincere customers to host in this minefield environment.
