Not reliably. Chinafy tests show that many of Drupal sites take up to six times longer to finish loading than in the US, with one case study showing a site took nearly 25 seconds to fully load, and many record broken images and video.
Most deployments rely on global CDNs such as Cloudflare whose standard PoPs sit outside the mainland, inflating round-trip time. Pages also call third-party libraries (e.g., Google Fonts, YouTube, social pixels) that are blocked or throttled in China, stalling rendering.
What happens when a Drupal site is accessed in China?
Taking a case study from Chinafy as one example, the waterfall tests show 24-50s waits, only ~30% of assets retrieved, blank text where web-font files fail, missing images/video and stalled JS, meaning the page appears visibly “broken”.
Will hosting my Drupal site inside China fix the problem?
Onshore hosting can reduce the physical distance between the user and the server, but proximity without compatibility is like a super-highway to a roadblock. This means if third-party resources remain incompatible, the site will still under-perform without additional optimizations.
No. You can bolt Chinafy onto your existing Drupal stack and launch a China-optimized version in about two weeks, with no code rewrites or re-hosting required. Rebuilding your site for China and securing an ICP license along with other prerequisites to onshore hosting can take six months or more and add significant cost.
Note: Some businesses may still require local hosting and an ICP license depending on their operations and business needs. For those, Chinafy can support onshore configurations. Always consult your legal/compliance team as needed.
Do I need an ICP license for a Drupal site?
An ICP filing or license is legally required only if you opt for mainland China hosting or use a China-based CDN where ICP compliance is mandatory. This requirement applies to any website that is physically hosted within China or utilizes China-based infrastructure - regardless of the CMS or site-building platform being used.
Does adding a China CDN solve Drupal performance issues?
A China-based CDN can improve loading speeds as static assets will be delivered from a node closer to the end user. However, as with onshore hosting, a China CDN only solves part of the problem with cross-border China web performance. A CDN does not handle for third-party resources, which are often the primary technical reason why a site performs poorly in mainland China.
How can I test my Drupal site’s performance from China?
You can test your site's performance using Chinafy’s グローバル・スピード・テスト または ビジュアル・スピード・テスト to compare load times, TTFB and third-party resources inside vs. outside China.
How does Chinafy optimize Drupal sites for China?
- Generates a version of your website for China visitors without affecting your current site.
- Combines both in-person and platform-level features to detect and replace blocked or slow resources that cause loading delays.
- If you're hosting offshore, Chinafy routes China-IP-based traffic to the China-optimized version of your site. If you're already hosting onshore, all your traffic will see the optimized version for China visitors.
- Chinafy then keeps your China-optimized site in sync with your global one, so any content changes are reflected accordingly.
Fill out the form and one of our Chinafy team members will reach out to you within 1 business day to book an initial call or with a plan for next steps.
check30%-40% faster compared to using a CDN alone.
checkVerifiable results in just 2 weeks, instead of 1-2 years.
checkLittle to no action required from your IT teams.