To migrate WordPress to China, you file first and move second. The ICP filing (ICP备案) sits on the critical path. Until it clears, a mainland server won’t serve your domain to anyone, so there is no staging link on the production host and no quiet beta. Everything else in the project feeds the filing or waits for it.
With a mainland entity already in place, we plan fourteen weeks for a typical WordPress site: a company marketing site with no online checkout. The filing takes three to six of them. The rebuild runs in parallel, on a copy that lives anywhere except the server you are moving to. The provider rules below were checked against Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud documentation on 24 September 2026.
Plans that treat the filing as paperwork on the side tend to find this out in the week they meant to launch. The new server is ready, and it can’t show the site to anyone.
| Work | Before the filing clears? | What it waits on |
|---|---|---|
| Mainland entity | Must already exist | Nothing. Everything waits on it |
| Mainland server | Yes, and it has to | The filing is made against it |
| Rebuild and dependency fixes | Yes, off the new server | The dependency audit |
| Public staging on the new server | No | The filing |
| DNS cutover | No | The filing, then testing |
| Public security filing (公安备案) | No, it follows launch | 30 days from opening |
Why the filing comes first
Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud both put this in writing, in almost the same words.
Under Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (工信部) rules, a domain resolved to a server in the Chinese mainland must complete its website filing before website access can be opened. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, last updated 4 September 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/zh/dws/support/how-do-i-troubleshoot-the-failures-to-access-a-website-by-using-its-domain-name
A domain resolved to Tencent Cloud resources in mainland China must complete ICP filing first, or it is intercepted by Tencent Cloud’s monitoring for unfiled domains. Source: Tencent Cloud (腾讯云) documentation, last updated 3 September 2026. https://cloud.tencent.com/document/product/243/19630
On our projects, that interception shuts ports 80 and 443, the standard HTTP and HTTPS ports, to your domain. They stay shut from the day the server is rented until the day the ICP filing (ICP备案) number is issued. The provider enforces it on its own network.
Alibaba Cloud’s own check takes 1 to 2 working days. The provincial Communications Administration (省级通信管理局) review that follows generally takes 1 to 20 working days. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, ICP filing process overview, last updated 26 August 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/zh/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/user-guide/icp-filing-application-overview
That is up to 22 working days on paper. Documents take time to gather and applications come back for corrections, so plan three to six weeks. Our guide to ICP filing for a WordPress site covers what the review checks on the site itself. A site that sells online may also need the commercial ICP licence (ICP许可证), which is a separate and slower application.
An in-country CDN won’t get you round the filing either.
The Cloudflare China Network requires an Enterprise plan and “a valid ICP (Internet Content Provider) filing or license for each apex domain you wish to onboard”. Source: Cloudflare developer documentation, last updated 30 April 2026. https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/
Week zero: the mainland entity
The ICP filing (ICP备案) is made in the name of a mainland company, so the company has to exist before the project does.
To apply for ICP filing, the filing entity must be an enterprise registered in the Chinese mainland or a Chinese mainland resident. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, ICP filing for enterprises outside the Chinese mainland, last updated 20 August 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/en/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/product-overview/icp-filing-application-for-enterprises-outside-the-chinese-mainland
A mainland subsidiary is your filing entity. With no subsidiary, settle the question before anyone briefs a designer. Setting up a company in China is a legal project on a timeline of its own, and it has to finish first.
Week zero also needs the domain registered and real-name verified, with the entity’s business licence to hand. And it needs a person in China who can sign for the company and answer the provider’s questions while the application is under review.
A company with no mainland entity has two routes left, a Hong Kong server or a delivery layer in front of its current host. The trade-off between them is set out in our guide to why WordPress is slow in China.
The Alibaba two-platform trap
Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) sells through two front doors. alibabacloud.com is the international platform, in English. The China platform lives at aliyun.com. They share a logo and most of their product names.
Alibaba Cloud international site (alibabacloud.com) accounts do not support ICP filing applications, for websites or apps. A filing needs a China site (aliyun.com) account. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, last updated 20 August 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/en/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/product-overview/icp-filing-application-for-enterprises-outside-the-chinese-mainland
Head office IT opens an account on alibabacloud.com, because that site answers in English and takes the corporate card. It buys a server and starts building.
Then the filing begins, and the account can’t file. The server itself has rules to meet.
An ICP filing with Alibaba Cloud must be made against an Alibaba Cloud server in the Chinese mainland, and an ECS instance qualifies only on a subscription of more than 3 months. Source: Alibaba Cloud help centre, server and access information check, last updated 2 September 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/en/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/user-guide/icp-filing-server-access-information-check
So the server comes first, on the China account, paid for at least a quarter, and it serves nothing public until the filing clears. Budget for that idle quarter. For Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud (腾讯云) and Huawei Cloud (华为云) side by side, see the guide to WordPress hosting in China.
What gets rebuilt and what gets copied
The content is the easy part. Posts, pages, custom fields, users, menus and the media library travel in a database dump and a copy of the uploads folder.
Anything that calls a host outside China while a page loads gets rebuilt: fonts, scripts, maps, video, captchas, analytics and social login. Check outgoing email as well. If the service that sends your form notifications sits abroad, it needs the same treatment.
The hosting model changes with the move. Alibaba’s guide to its Simple Application Server (轻量应用服务器), updated 19 August 2026, builds a site from a preset WordPress application image, which is an operating system with WordPress installed on it. We haven’t found a managed WordPress product on any mainland cloud. Updates, backups and the patch level belong to you or to whoever runs the site.
Updates need their own plan.
A Chinese WordPress user reported 429 errors on every WordPress.org subdomain. WordPress.org replied the same day that “several Chinese network sources are rate-limited on certain services due to a high level of abuse”, and that it would not provide whitelisting. Source: WordPress.org Meta Trac, ticket #5106, 21 March 2020, read from the Internet Archive copy of 16 January 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260116133057/https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5106
The dashboard doesn’t announce it. Update checks fail and the site quietly stops offering updates. Before cutover, decide whether patches come from a domestic mirror or from a named person who stages them outside China.
Fix the dependencies while the filing is in review
This is where most of the fourteen weeks go. Load the current site from a mainland connection (a colleague in Shanghai with a laptop will do) and list every host in the network panel. Each gets a verdict: keep, self-host, replace or delete. Our guide to the WordPress plugins that break in China works through the usual suspects host by host, with dated verdicts.
Median page load went from 23.4 seconds on a European origin to 1.2 seconds on a mainland origin, and roughly half of that improvement came from deleting external calls rather than from moving the server. Source: ChinaWebFoundry, published 29 August 2026. https://www.chinawebfoundry.com/resources/china-web-guide/is-wordpress-blocked-in-china/
That was one of our migrations. The carrier and test date behind it aren’t published.
So remediation belongs in the filing weeks, done on a copy of the site: a local build, or a Hong Kong server running the same PHP and database versions as the mainland one.
Cutover, DNS and the day the ports open
The ICP filing (ICP备案) number arrives. Deploy the rebuilt site to the mainland server and put the number in the footer.
After the filing succeeds, the site must display the ICP number issued by the ministry at the bottom of the page, linked to beian.miit.gov.cn. Leaving it off can bring an order to correct it and a fine of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan from the provincial Communications Administration. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, last updated 12 August 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/zh/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/the-icp-record-post-processing-1
Before the switch, test the new server from inside the country by pointing a mainland machine’s hosts file at it (a local override that skips DNS). Do it from a cloud region and from a home broadband line. They can disagree, and your visitors are on the home line.
Lower the DNS time to live a couple of days before the switch, so the change spreads fast and you can roll back quickly if you have to. Pick a weekday morning, Beijing time, well clear of a Chinese public holiday. Switch the record, then run the same tests again. Keep the old origin running until the new one has held for a week; your current site serves normally right up to cutover.
One more clock starts the day the site opens: the public security filing, a separate registration with the public security authorities.
A website must complete its public security filing (公安备案) within 30 days of opening. Source: Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) help centre, ICP filing process overview, last updated 26 August 2026. https://help.aliyun.com/zh/icp-filing/basic-icp-service/user-guide/icp-filing-application-overview
How long it takes to migrate WordPress to China
The filing alone is three to six weeks, so why fourteen? Because the server can’t be bought until the China account exists, and nothing deploys until the filing clears. The public security filing and Baidu wait for launch. This is the table the Shanghai team plans from, for a typical WordPress site with the entity in place.
| Phase | Weeks | Blocking dependency | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dependency audit | 1 to 2 | Access to the current site | Web team |
| China account, server, domain checks | 1 to 2 | Mainland entity and business licence | Your China entity |
| ICP filing (ICP备案), submitted and reviewed | 2 to 7 | Mainland server on a 3-month-plus subscription | Entity, provider, provincial regulator |
| Rebuild and remediation, off the new server | 2 to 9 | The dependency audit | Web team |
| Chinese content and localisation | 3 to 10 | Approved source copy | Marketing |
| Deploy to the mainland server, footer ICP number | 8 to 10 | Filing number issued | Web team |
| Testing from mainland vantage points | 10 to 12 | Site deployed | Web team |
| DNS cutover | 12 | Test sign-off | Web team and DNS owner |
| Public security filing (公安备案) | 12 to 14 | Site live, 30-day window | Your China entity |
| Baidu (百度) verification and first submissions | 12 to 14 | Site live | Marketing |
The filing row is the one that moves. Some provinces approve in days. A single application returned for a correction can use up all the slack there is. Two costs catch budgets out: the server you pay for through the quiet weeks, and a week or more of two hosting bills while the old origin stays up. Our China migration service is scoped from this same table, and our WordPress in China page covers when a mainland move is the right call in the first place.
Frequently asked
Can we test on the mainland server before the filing clears?
You can install and configure over SSH, but the site won’t load on your domain until the ICP filing (ICP备案) number is issued. The provider intercepts it. Build and review the site on a copy somewhere else, then move the finished site across once the number arrives.
Do we need a Chinese company to host WordPress in China?
For a mainland server, yes. The filing entity has to be an enterprise registered in the Chinese mainland or a mainland resident, and an unfiled domain doesn’t serve from a mainland server. A company without one can use a Hong Kong server or a delivery layer instead.
Our domain already has an ICP number with another host. Do we start again?
You transfer it. Alibaba Cloud’s help centre, updated 4 September 2026, lists a filing held with another provider as a reason a site stays unreachable, and the fix is a filing transfer (接入备案) to the new host. The site doesn’t serve from the new server until that clears, so the transfer sits on the critical path too.
Can we keep our current theme?
Often, yes. A theme can move as it is if nothing in it calls a host outside China while the page loads. The audit tells you. Themes that pull fonts or scripts from Google, or embed video from abroad, need those calls replaced with self-hosted files or domestic services before cutover.
Need help with this?
ChinaWebFoundry handles WordPress projects in China end to end. If any of this feels like more than you want to tackle alone, get in touch.
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