Do CDNs and Cloudflare work in China?

If your site already runs on Cloudflare or another CDN, it’s natural to assume China is covered. The name suggests delivery everywhere. In China, it depends on an ICP.

So don’t ask whether your CDN connects. Ask where visitors are served from, and what you’re allowed to use. This guide is part of putting your website in China.

Does Cloudflare work in China?

Your site can load, but a standard Cloudflare setup doesn’t serve mainland visitors from inside the mainland. Cloudflare says those visitors can connect to data centers outside the mainland.¹

In its words, “these longer distances will lead to high latency and low availability.”¹ The passage opens with “sometimes” and is undated, so read it as a warning, not a measurement.

One public example fits that picture. A developer wrote up a Cloudflare-proxied site in July 2026, and DNS resolved on every network checked.²⁷

Network checked	Ping result, published July 2026
China Telecom	Reachable, about 220 to 240 ms
China Unicom	Reachable, about 220 to 240 ms
China Mobile	Timed out
Hong Kong	Reachable, under 1 to 151 ms

That’s one site, checked by ping with one tool, so it proves nothing general. The author puts the Mobile timeout down to its international routing. It does show why a single “it works” result isn’t enough.

Our guide to telling blocked from slow covers how to read such results.

What makes a CDN “work” in China?

Being allowed to deliver from inside the mainland. That takes an ICP number and a provider with a mainland network, so your existing CDN account doesn’t qualify on its own.

Cloudflare says the ICP requirement applies whether a site sits on a mainland server or reaches visitors in China through a CDN.⁶

Global providers typically work through local partners. Cloudflare’s partner is JD Cloud.²

Fastly describes the same model: a global CDN sold in China combines its own network with a local affiliate, under a separate contract. It says its own closest location is Hong Kong.¹⁸

The cleanest way to compare providers is to ask two questions: what serves a mainland visitor, and what’s required first.

Provider and option	Mainland visitors served from	Required first
Cloudflare, global network	Outside the mainland 1	Nothing China-specific from Cloudflare
Cloudflare China Network	JD Cloud, mainland 2	Enterprise plan, ICP for each apex domain 23
Tencent Cloud CDN, “Chinese mainland” or “Global”	Mainland nodes 8	Real-name registration, ICP filing 8
Tencent Cloud CDN, “Outside Chinese mainland”	Nodes such as Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan 8	No ICP filing 8
Alibaba Cloud CDN, “Chinese Mainland Only” or “Global”	Mainland nodes 9	ICP filing 9
Alibaba Cloud CDN, “Global (Excluding the Chinese Mainland)”	Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong 9	No ICP filing 9
Tencent EdgeOne, without a filing	“Global AZ (excluding Chinese mainland)” only 11	No ICP filing 11
Huawei Cloud CDN, zone including the mainland	Mainland	Domain filed with MIIT 14

This table shows what each provider asks for, not what the law requires of you. That second question is for a local adviser.

What Cloudflare’s China Network requires, and what it leaves out

It’s the mainland route for Cloudflare customers, and it comes with conditions many foreign companies testing China won’t meet.

Before a zone goes live, Cloudflare lists these steps:³

1. Hold an Enterprise plan and add the China Network subscription.
2. Get an ICP filing or license for every apex domain.
3. Sign the additional terms and a self-attestation letter.
4. Pass JD Cloud’s review of your domain content.
5. Show the ICP number in your page footer.

Then allow about 24 to 48 hours for a first zone.³ The ICP comes first, takes far longer and, says China Briefing, needs a Chinese entity or a licensed local partner.³⁶ See whether you need an ICP license.

Not everything follows you across. The product list has limits that matter for real sites:

Feature	On the China Network
Cache	Static cache only, no Tiered Cache or Cache Reserve 4
WAF custom and managed rules, HTTP/3	Available 4
Turnstile	Not available in the mainland 45. Challenge Pages on China Network have used mainland-hosted Turnstile widgets since October 28, 2026, a change that doesn’t mention form widgets 35
R2	No buckets created in the mainland, no custom domains there 4
Pages	Not available in the mainland 5
Bot Management	Certain models only 4

Dynamic pages are the other gap. Cloudflare warns that uncached APIs and web apps may stay slow if your origin is outside the mainland.¹

Its CDN Global Acceleration add-on, formerly China Express, is aimed at that, and it needs both Enterprise and China Network.¹⁷

If an ICP is revoked, JD Cloud may suspend the service, and Cloudflare reroutes traffic to its nearest data centers outside China.⁵ Your site then goes back to being served from outside the mainland.

Can you use a CDN in China without an ICP?

Providers allow it, but only from outside the mainland. You pick an option that excludes the mainland and serve visitors from nearby nodes. In the provider documentation we read, none offers mainland delivery without a filing.

That’s where marketing and documentation part ways. An EdgeOne blog post from May 2026 marks EdgeOne as needing no ICP for “international CDN services.”¹²

EdgeOne’s own documentation is narrower. Mainland and global zones need a filing first, and a domain without one can only use the zone that excludes the mainland.¹¹

Do nearby nodes help? Probably, with limits. A 2020 study found Hong Kong was the one exception to China’s cross-border slowdown: about 3 hours a day, while most mainland receivers averaged 5 to 17 across all senders.¹⁹

That study measured sender and receiver pairs, not CDNs, so applying it here is our inference. EdgeOne’s figures for this tradeoff carry no sources, so we don’t repeat them.³⁰

Two more limits apply:

• Your traffic still crosses the border. Caching shortens the trip for static files. Anything uncached travels back to your origin.
• Filings may still come up. Alibaba Cloud asks for a public security filing for Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan acceleration, even without an ICP.¹⁰ Cloudflare’s ICP wording also covers delivery to visitors in China through a CDN.⁶ Ask a local adviser whether either applies to you.

Moving existing traffic needs care too. Alibaba Cloud warns that clients can’t reach mainland nodes after the switch. It says to confirm no mainland traffic remains, to watch local DNS caches and to clear yours afterward.⁹

Tencent’s EdgeOne also documents a feature on its Enterprise plan, Cross-MLC-border Secure Acceleration, for overseas origins with mainly mainland users.¹³ The page doesn’t discuss ICP, so raise that with an adviser first.

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Which China CDN products are closing?

Three big names have announced exits or already retired their China CDN, so older “best CDN for China” lists need a second look. Before you shortlist a global brand, check that its China product is still on sale.

Provider	What was announced	Status for you
Amazon CloudFront, China	No new customers after September 30, 2026. Support ends May 31, 2027, with four PoPs retired 15	AWS’s guide points to Cloudsway and BaishanCloud 16
Akamai China CDN	Customer letter set decommission for June 30, 2026 17	Tencent Cloud migration offered, Wangsu in preparation at the time. Others move to Akamai outside China 17
Azure China CDN	Retired starting December 1, 2025. Profiles not migrated no longer serve traffic 29	Azure recommends Front Door, or a third-party CDN for profiles it can’t migrate 29

The scope differs by page. AWS’s announcement names Ningxia,¹⁵ while its guide says “China regions.”¹⁶ If you’re on CloudFront there, ask AWS what covers your setup.

We could confirm Akamai’s announcement but not what happened on the date. Azure’s FAQ doesn’t say whether Front Door needs an ICP, so ask before you move.

EdgeOne’s September 2025 list still shows Akamai and CloudFront as options, eight months after Akamai’s letter was reported.³⁰

Why a CDN alone won’t fix your site in China

A CDN speeds up what passes through it. It doesn’t change what your pages load from other domains, and that’s often where they break.

Chinafy makes the point about maps: a CDN doesn’t proxy third-party domains.²⁸ In the July 2026 write-up, the failing resources were third parties: video, images and a tracking pixel.²⁷

The hostname matters too. A platform’s default address has its own result. GreatFire tests exact addresses, so a domain’s root and its other URLs can read differently:²⁶

Address	Root result	Root disrupted, last 90 days	Last root test	Tested URLs on the domain
https://workers.dev	Blocked 21	5 of 5	October 11, 2026	210 of 227 blocked
https://vercel.app	Blocked 23	2 of 2	September 14, 2026	All 188 blocked
https://pages.dev	Not blocked 22	0 of 3	October 23, 2026	163: 14 blocked, 95 disrupted, 38 accessible, 16 no verdict
https://netlify.app	Not blocked 24	0 of 5	October 1, 2026	143: 10 blocked, 92 disrupted, 41 accessible
cloudfront.net	Root untested 25	n/a	n/a	2,946, rated “Mixed”

“Not blocked” doesn’t mean fast, and it doesn’t mean served from the mainland. The roots of pages.dev and netlify.app read clean, yet most URLs tested on those domains show blocking or disruption.²²²⁴

Both root verdicts were also revised after GreatFire stopped counting refused connections as blocking.²²²⁴

Shared addresses are the last unknown. A 2019 study found 47 blocked Cloudflare IPs, shared by at least 85 sites.²⁰ We found no current figure for how often it happens.

Our guide to shared IP blocks covers the evidence.

How to choose your CDN setup for China

Start from whether you can hold an ICP. That one answer decides most of what follows.

1. Chinese entity and ICP?

   Yes: mainland CDN (Cloudflare China Network, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud). No: standard CDN, or a region excluding the mainland.

2. Either way

   Remove failing third parties, then test from Telecom, Unicom and Mobile.

Your situation	Sensible next step
No Chinese entity, testing demand	Keep your CDN, or try a region excluding the mainland, and fix your pages first
Chinese entity, ICP in hand, already on Cloudflare Enterprise	Ask about China Network
Chinese entity, ICP in hand, no Enterprise plan	Compare a Chinese provider’s mainland option
Mostly dynamic pages, origin abroad	Plan for the origin path, not only the cache
On CloudFront China, Akamai China or Azure China CDN	Check your migration status now

Vendors disagree on how much a local CDN buys you. Cloudflare and Chinese providers present it as the way in.

Fastly calls the gain potentially marginal, suggests starting without one and measuring, and claims a local CDN doesn’t reduce censorship risk.¹⁸ It’s a vendor too, so that isn’t neutral.

The same brief concedes performance “will always be better” with a local CDN chained behind a global one. Its NetScaler data for January to August 2024 also shows Alibaba and Tencent beating Fastly on 75th percentile response time.¹⁸

We don’t pick a winner, because we found no independent comparison.

Measure before you pay:

1. Test by network. Check China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile separately, since they can differ.²⁷
2. Test at different hours. The 2020 study found a daily pattern in cross-border slowdowns.¹⁹
3. Test your own domain. Use a real page, with every asset it loads, not your home page alone.

Our guide to testing your site from China lists the tools. For the page itself, see how to speed up your website in China.

If you’re weighing locations, read Hong Kong or mainland hosting.

The bottom line

Cloudflare and other standard CDNs reach China from the outside. Delivery from inside the mainland takes an ICP, a Chinese entity or licensed partner behind it and a product built for it.

If you can’t meet those conditions, a nearby region is the realistic option. Test it, because we found no independent numbers for your case.

How Index in China can help

We work on making foreign sites visible on Chinese search engines: we localize your site into Simplified Chinese, then index it there.

CDN setup and ICPs aren’t part of the offer we list, and we’ll tell you if your case needs a local adviser. See what we do.

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