Short answer Two questions decide whether a CDN helps you in mainland China. Does it have points of presence inside the mainland? Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Baidu AI Cloud, Wangsu and Cloudflare's China Network do; Fastly, Vercel, Netlify and most edge platforms do not, and Akamai stopped on 30 June 2026. And who holds the ICP filing? Almost every provider with mainland nodes operates bring-your-own-licence — the infrastructure is theirs, the filing is yours, and it must be issued to a mainland China legal entity. Note also that the filing requirement follows delivery, not just hosting: it applies whether the site sits on a mainland server or is merely delivered into China through a CDN.
What the CDN providers themselves state about China
| Fact | Primary source |
|---|---|
| The filing requirement is not avoided by keeping your server abroad. Cloudflare states it applies "whether the site is hosted on a server in Mainland China or delivered to visitors in China through a CDN", and that "all websites with their own domain name that operate inside China must obtain a license" — without one, "your site can be shut down." | Cloudflare — China Network: Internet Content Provider (ICP) |
| Cloudflare does not act as registrant for you: it "recommends that you apply for an ICP license through your hosting or cloud services provider, who will register the ICP number on your behalf" — the bring-your-own-licence pattern common to international CDNs with mainland presence. | Cloudflare — China Network: Internet Content Provider (ICP) |
| The filing binds to the access provider, so switching CDN is a filing change as well as a DNS change: "you must add [the new provider] as a service provider", and a filing left without a current provider "may be classified as an empty shell." | Alibaba Cloud — ICP filing prerequisites |
| Akamai's mainland China CDN reached decommission on 30 June 2026, after which remaining requests are served from neighbouring countries unless a country-specific partner solution is activated; Akamai moved to a partner model with Tencent Cloud and Wangsu. | South China Morning Post — Akamai to cease CDN operations in China |
| Platforms without mainland presence say so directly — for example "Vercel does not have servers or CDN nodes in mainland China" — so their nearest points of presence sit outside the Great Firewall. | Vercel — Accessing Vercel-hosted sites from mainland China |
Sources verified by the 21YunBox China engineering team on 2026-08-27.
Two questions decide whether a CDN will help you in mainland China, and neither is about price or feature lists:
- Does it have points of presence inside mainland China? If the nodes are in Hong Kong, Singapore or Tokyo, requests from Shanghai still cross the Great Firewall. The crossing is what costs you, not the distance.
- Who holds the ICP filing? In-country delivery requires one, it is issued to a mainland China legal entity, and it binds to whoever serves the traffic. Most international CDNs with mainland nodes operate on a bring-your-own-licence basis — the infrastructure is theirs, the filing is your problem.
The table below sorts the market on exactly those two axes.
The comparison
| Provider | Mainland China nodes | Who holds the ICP | Practical notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alibaba Cloud CDN | Yes, extensive | You must hold it | The domestic default. Console and filing process are Chinese-language; a mainland entity and account are prerequisites. |
| Tencent Cloud CDN | Yes, extensive | You must hold it | Comparable footprint to Alibaba. Also the partner Akamai moved customers toward on exit. |
| Huawei Cloud CDN | Yes | You must hold it | Strong where the rest of the stack is already Huawei. |
| Baidu AI Cloud CDN | Yes | You must hold it | Usually chosen alongside Baidu search and analytics rather than on its own merits. |
| Wangsu / ChinaNetCenter | Yes, extensive | You must hold it | The largest independent domestic CDN, and the other partner in Akamai’s transition. Often sits underneath Western-branded “China CDN” offerings. |
| Cloudflare China Network | Yes, via JD Cloud partnership | You must hold it | Requires an ICP filing before the China network can be enabled; documented explicitly in Cloudflare’s own China Network docs. |
| Akamai | No longer | — | Akamai decommissioned its mainland China CDN on 30 June 2026 and moved to a partner model. See what that means now. |
| AWS CloudFront | No mainland PoPs on the global partition | — | AWS China is a separate partition operated by Chinese entities, with its own accounts and its own filing requirements. A global CloudFront distribution does not reach into it. |
| Fastly / Vercel / Netlify and most edge platforms | No | — | Nearest points of presence are Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul or Singapore — all outside the Great Firewall. |
| 21YunBox | Yes | We hold or update it | Managed delivery layer over your existing origin, with the filing handled as part of the service rather than as your prerequisite. |
Reading the table
The “who holds the ICP” column is the one that decides project schedules. Almost every row that has mainland nodes puts the filing on you — which is correct and reasonable from the provider’s side, and is also why so many China launches stall. The infrastructure works on day one; the filing takes weeks and cannot be bought faster.
If you do not have a mainland China legal entity, that column is not a task, it is a wall: the filing is issued to an entity, so there is nothing for it to attach to. See what to do without a Chinese entity.
A CDN alone does not fix a page, only a file. Even with mainland nodes and a valid filing, the third-party services your pages call — fonts, consent managers, analytics, embedded video, marketing-automation form endpoints — resolve independently and have no mainland presence. A page can be served quickly and still fail to convert, because the form is the conversion event.
Beware “China coverage” in marketing copy. It frequently means Hong Kong or Singapore. Ask two questions of any vendor: which mainland cities are the nodes in, and who is named as the access provider on the ICP filing. Those two answers separate the real options from the near-shore ones faster than any feature comparison.
What to check before you sign anything
- Which mainland cities? Not “Asia-Pacific”, not “China coverage” — the city list.
- Whose filing? Yours, theirs, or none. If yours, does your entity already exist.
- Does the filing name them as access provider? A filing that names your previous provider has to be updated, and a filing with no current provider can be cancelled as an “empty shell”.
- What happens to the third-party calls on the page? If the answer is “nothing”, the CDN is solving the smaller half of your problem.
- Who fixes it when it breaks at 2am in Chengdu? In-country support and in-country testing are different from a global support queue.
Link: Hosting and CDN for China — the two gates and the four paths
Frequently Asked Questions
Which CDNs actually have servers inside mainland China?
The domestic providers — Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Baidu AI Cloud and Wangsu — plus Cloudflare's China Network through its JD Cloud partnership. Akamai did until 30 June 2026 and no longer does. Fastly, Vercel, Netlify and most edge platforms do not, and serve China from Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul or Singapore.
Can we use a China CDN without an ICP filing?
No, and the common workaround does not work either. The requirement follows delivery rather than hosting: Cloudflare's own documentation says it applies whether the site is hosted on a mainland server "or delivered to visitors in China through a CDN". Keeping the origin abroad and pointing a China CDN at it does not remove the obligation.
Does the CDN provider get the ICP for us?
Usually not. The standard model is bring-your-own-licence — Cloudflare, for instance, recommends applying through your hosting or cloud provider, who registers the number on your behalf. That requires you to already have a mainland China legal entity for it to be issued to, which is the point most projects discover late.
We already have an ICP and want to switch CDN. Is that just a DNS change?
No. The filing binds to the access provider as well as the domain, so the new provider has to be added to it. A filing left naming a provider that no longer serves you can be reclassified as an "empty shell" and cancelled — so the filing update belongs in the migration plan, not after it.
Is a Hong Kong or Singapore CDN good enough?
For static assets, partly. Both are outside the Great Firewall, so APIs, form submissions and dynamic content still cross it. It requires no filing precisely because it never enters China — the same reason it does not fix the latency.
What does "China coverage" mean in vendor marketing?
Frequently Hong Kong or Singapore. Ask two questions instead: which mainland cities are the nodes in, and who is named as the access provider on the filing. Those two answers separate real in-country delivery from near-shore faster than any feature comparison.
