Shopify is a hosted SaaS e-commerce platform whose online stores are rendered server-side and cached on a Cloudflare-backed CDN.

Not by default. Around 93% of Shopify stores take over 30 seconds to load completely in China. Most sites built outside of China face similar barriers when it comes to fast and effective China delivery. These barriers are a combination of resources being delivered from either blocked or slow networks. While resources from Shopify’s primary domain are not blocked in China, there are third-party web resources that are incompatible in China and unable to be addressed via CDN solutions.

Read more | Shopifyは中国でも使えますか？

Shopify sites typically load 9.7x slower in China than they do globally. The average loading time is 36.8 seconds. Most sites are also missing at least 14% of their resources, even after they've fully loaded. This means visual elements, ads and analytics may not be visible or functional. 

Read more | Shopify Plusは中国で使えますか？

No. You can bolt Chinafy onto your existing Shopify 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. 

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. 

Read more | What is an ICP license?

If you are transferring Chinese personal information outside of China, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) applies extraterritorially to any foreign company, such as when Chinese leads enter a global CRM. Collecting data for cross-border data transfer requires specific consent and, when you exceed ~1 million records or handle sensitive data, may require a security assessment, data localization or regulator-approved transfer mechanisms.

Read more | Navigating China's PIPL

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. For example, a CDN does not handle for third-party resources, which are often the primary technical reason why a Shopify site performs poorly in mainland China. Additionally, not all CDNs are as effective inside of China as they are outside of China because of their varied points of presence and operational set-up. Separately, Shopify does not fully allow the manual addition of additional CDNs and imposes rate limiting restrictions on them.

Read more | チャイナフィ対CDN

You can test your Shopify 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.

- 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.

Read more | How does Chinafy work?

Read more | How does Chinafy work?