Glossary

China Digital Entry Glossary

Entering mainland China with a digital product means meeting a set of terms that do not exist in the rest of your stack. ICP filing. Bei'an. The Great Firewall. MIIT. CN2 and CMI transit paths. The PSB filing. The CDN license. The WeChat Pay merchant account. The WFOE. The WeChat Mini Program. The CDN. PIPL. Each one names a concrete constraint — a regulator, a carrier network, a compliance gate — that shapes your launch calendar, your hosting architecture, and which third-party services your China visitors can actually reach.

This hub collects short-reference definitions for the terms we cite across our articles and service pages. Each entry gives you a canonical definition, what the term does and does not mean, and a hand-off to the deeper coverage where the term matters in practice. Term pages define; articles diagnose. The goal is to give you the vocabulary to read our longer guides, talk to your legal and engineering teams, and plan a China launch without guessing at what each requirement actually covers.

Need the dates rather than the definitions? The chronological regulations timeline lines up every instrument these terms cite — MIIT notices, CAC orders, the SAFE measures, and the WeChat platform gates — with its effective date and its deeper coverage.

China Digital Entry Glossary — the regulatory, infrastructure, and ecosystem terms of a mainland China launch

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Bei'an (备案) — ICP Filing

The compliance gate every mainland-hosted domain passes through. Filing registers your domain and its operator with the authorities, ties the site to a hosting provider, and sets the launch calendar for any product on mainland infrastructure.

ICP License (ICP证)

The second, longer permit that paid products trigger. The filing covers baseline registration; the license covers commercial online platforms and paid services. Picking the wrong one stalls a launch.

MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology)

The national ministry whose systems run mainland filing verification and licensing. Every filing SMS, provincial review, and mainland CDN license passes through MIIT pipelines.

PIPL (个人信息保护法)

The Personal Information Protection Law: in force since November 2021, and Article 3 can reach offshore sites targeting mainland users.

Filing & Regulation

The registrations, permits, and data rules that attach to a mainland launch — from the PSB filing that follows the ICP number to the PIPL mechanisms governing cross-border data transfer.

CIIO (关键信息基础设施运营者)

The operator of designated critical information infrastructure under State Council Decree 745 — the Article 2 definition, the regulator-run designation mechanism, and the three data obligations designation triggers.

Data Residency in China

The storage-side PIPL obligation: mainland-collected personal information stays on mainland servers for a defined class — and cross-border transfer needs an Article 38 mechanism.

PSB Filing (公安备案)

The police-side registration that runs after the ICP filing number issues — and why outside-mainland-only CDN acceleration needs it instead of ICP.

WFOE (Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise)

The mainland company that holds the ICP filing. Why a Hong Kong entity cannot substitute, and why entity setup is the launch's first domino.

APP Filing (APP备案)

The ICP registration for native mobile apps whose backends resolve to mainland servers — same MIIT pipeline as websites, and since 2023 a distribution bar for unfiled apps.

VATS / EDI License (B21)

The MIIT value-added telecom permit family and its B21 transaction-processing sub-category — and where the 2024 pilot lifts the foreign-equity cap.

Cross-Border Data Transfer (China)

The three PIPL Article 38 mechanisms — security assessment, SCC filing, certification — plus the 2024 exemption tiers under CAC Order No.16.

Sensitive Personal Information (敏感个人信息)

The PIPL Article 28 protected class — six statutory categories plus minors under 14 — gated by Article 29 separate consent and tracked separately on the cross-border threshold ladder.

CAC (Cyberspace Administration of China)

China's cyberspace regulator — the authority behind data-export Orders No.11, No.13, and No.16, and the news pre-approval gate for Mini Program filings.

SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange)

China's foreign-exchange regulator — the authority behind the 2019 Measures governing payment institutions' cross-border FX business; on this site's four-domain model, SAFE owns the money flows.

Data Security Law (DSL)

China's framework law for all data processing — it grades data by the harm a leak would cause and introduces "important data", the trigger behind the cross-border security assessment.

Cybersecurity Law (CSL)

China's framework cybersecurity law — it defines 'network', 'cybersecurity', and 'network operator'; the 2025 amendment (effective 2026-01-01) strengthens legal liability and adds an AI-support provision.

ICP Filing Lookup (备案查询)

The public query of MIIT filing records at beian.miit.gov.cn — what it verifies, what a filing number proves and does not, and how to use it for vendor due diligence.

Business License (营业执照)

The registration document a mainland-registered company holds — the entity-level prerequisite behind the ICP filing, WeChat Pay onboarding, and cloud real-name verification.

Infrastructure & Performance

The network terms that decide what China visitors can reach and how fast — carrier transit, firewall-blocked endpoints, the filed and licensed mainland CDN edge, and the operator-run clouds behind the same ICP filing gate.

AWS China Regions (Sinnet & NWCD)

Amazon's mainland regions run by licensed local operators, behind a separate China account — with the same ICP filing obligations as any mainland host.

Azure China (21Vianet)

Microsoft's cloud in mainland China — physically separated, independently operated and transacted by 21Vianet, with its own filing chain.

Great Firewall (GFW)

The reason specific page features break for China visitors while the site itself stays reachable. Whole categories of third-party endpoints — Google Maps, YouTube, global APIs — fail from mainland sessions.

CN2 / CMI Transit

The carrier paths your traffic rides — the invisible variable in every China speed test. Results differ by carrier line, so per-carrier measurement is the only honest test.

CDN License (增值电信业务经营许可证—CDN)

The MIIT-issued license that decides which operators may run mainland CDN. Why every global CDN needs a licensed local partner to hold a mainland edge.

CDN (China Content Delivery Network)

Edge caching on China networks. Why an offshore edge never touches the cross-border hop — and what a filed, licensed mainland edge requires.

Platforms & Payments

The WeChat surfaces and payment rails a foreign merchant connects to — from the merchant account and its acceptance paths to settlement of the funds into a foreign bank account.

WeChat Pay Merchant

The merchant account behind WeChat Pay checkout: three acceptance paths, onboarding on pay.weixin.qq.com, merchant ID bound to your APPID, entity and filing prerequisites.

WeChat Mini Program (微信小程序)

The lightweight app inside WeChat — and since September 2023, a publishing target that fails unfiled with error 86369.

H5 Pay (WeChat H5 Payment)

The WeChat Pay flow for mobile web pages — checkout without a Mini Program build, on the same merchant account as in-program checkout.

WeChat Official Account (微信公众号)

The publish-and-nurture layer inside WeChat — Service vs Subscription accounts, and why the JSAPI payment gate requires a verified Service Account.

Cross-Border Settlement (SAFE)

How WeChat Pay money reaches a foreign bank account — SAFE's frame, the once-only currency choice, and the numbers that are listed, not confirmed.

Alipay vs WeChat Pay

Two separate acceptance agreements a foreign merchant may hold — which acceptance path your entity qualifies for, and when the answer is one, both, or neither.

WeCom (WeChat Work)

Tencent's enterprise communication and office tool with full WeChat connectivity — what it is, what it is not, and why Company Pay is not merchant acceptance.

Weixin Open Platform

The developer portal that connects native mobile apps to WeChat — Share, Login, Pay, and Favorites via SDK, plus UnionID across surfaces.

UnionPay (银联)

The card-scheme layer beneath the wallets — what the official English page states, and why merchant-side card acceptance is a separate question.

Need help navigating these China entry requirements?

If your product is heading to mainland China, the filing, hosting, and ecosystem decisions are one planning conversation — not three separate workstreams. We coordinate ICP filing and license assessment, mainland hosting on Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, and WeChat ecosystem integration under one roadmap.

ICP filing & compliance → ICP filing & compliance service
Mainland hosting & CDN → Mainland hosting & CDN service
WeChat Mini Programs & Pay → WeChat ecosystem service

Email hello@chinagateway.pro with your product description. We will tell you which permits apply, what entity you need, and a realistic timeline.