How a China launch actually runs.
Ten phases, four filings, two platforms, six Android stores. The order matters more than the effort — several of these can run at once, and one of them sets the floor for everything else.
Typical elapsed time: 3–5 months for iOS or Android. Not six weeks — anybody quoting six weeks has not counted the filings.
Prerequisites and filings — mostly serial, mostly before anything else.
Phases 01 to 05 are the part that cannot be parallelised away. Do these late and everything downstream moves with them.
Readiness check
Twenty minutes, no cost. Category, build, entity situation. We tell you if it is viable before you spend anything — including when the answer is no.
Entity
You register or designate the Chinese entity that will hold the accounts, the filings and the copyright. This is yours, always — we advise and coordinate, and we never hold an entity on a client's behalf.
Software copyright
Applied for first, because it is the longest single item and several filings reference it.
Critical path · 60–90 daysICP filing
Website and app content filed through the hosting provider: 7–20 business days. Needs the entity, a China-hosted server and a compliant site with a privacy policy.
Public security filing
Due within 30 days of ICP approval. It is a small piece of paperwork that quietly blocks store submissions when it is missed.
Adaptation, accounts and submission — this is where it starts to overlap.
Adaptation can run while the filings queue. Developer accounts can be opened while adaptation runs. Only the submission itself has to wait for everything.
China-readiness adaptation
We produce the plan — what breaks, what replaces it, in which order — and your developers implement it. We review the result against every review gate the stores apply.
Developer accounts
Corporate accounts on each store, with the identity and qualification paperwork each one wants. Six stores means six queues and six sets of requirements.
App filing
The app itself files with MIIT, separately from the website. No filing, no submission slot.
Submission
Every artefact prepared and submitted on your behalf, each review tracked individually — the App Store and six Android stores do not move at the same speed.
Where most rejections happenRemediation and version iterations
Rejections diagnosed and resubmitted until they clear, included in the fee. Version updates go back through the same queues — the filing work is done once, the review work is not.
The same project, showing what can run at the same time.
This is the honest version of the timeline. Software copyright sets the floor; everything else is fitted around it.
Four registrations, four numbers, one mistake people make.
Almost everyone assumes ICP filing is the whole story. It is the first of four, and each one has to be displayed correctly in the right place.
ICP filing
Filed through your hosting provider in mainland China. 7–20 business days when the paperwork is clean. Everything else waits on this one.
Public security filing
A separate registration with the local public security bureau, due within 30 days of ICP approval. Missing it is one of the most common self-inflicted delays.
App filing
The app itself needs its own filing, separate from the website. Stores will not open a submission slot without it.
Mini Program filing
WeChat Mini Programs file separately again, and some categories need a qualification certificate before the filing is accepted.
What we need, and when we need it.
Most delays in a China launch are not caused by the filings. They are caused by an input that arrived three weeks late.
Corporate
- The entity — registered, or a decision to register one. Including who the legal representative will be.
- Business licence and the contact who can sign filings.
- Company stamps where the store or the filing authority requires a sealed document.
- A China-hosted server if the filing route needs one — we advise on the minimum that satisfies the provider.
Product
- Your app build with the adaptation done, or a decision to have us build for China instead.
- Privacy policy and user agreement, in Chinese, covering what your app actually collects.
- Account deletion path and a data-export route — both are review gates now, not optional extras.
- Store assets: name, description, screenshots, category, age rating.
- Category certificates if your category needs one. This is the single most common cause of a late stop.
Where projects actually slip.
The entity is not ready
Nothing can be filed without it: not the copyright, not ICP, not a single developer account. Every week the entity waits is a week added to the end of the project, because it is the first domino.
Software copyright started late
Sixty to ninety days is not a queue you can pay to skip. Teams that treat it as a formality to do "after the build" routinely lose two months doing nothing but waiting.
The build is not China-ready
Google dependencies, a missing account-deletion path, permissions the app asks for but never uses, a privacy policy that does not match the code. These are the rejections we see most, and all of them are avoidable before the first submission.
Find out which of these applies to you.
A 20-minute call and a written readiness check: your category, your filings, your critical path, and the things that would have cost you a month. If it is not viable, you will know on the call.
Prefer to talk it through? Message us on WhatsApp — usually answered the same day.