17 September 2015. The Chinese tech company Baidu and the internet services company CloudFlare have joined forces to improve internet speeds. The partnership means that foreign websites will now be able to load faster in China, and Chinese websites will also be able to load faster outside of the country. Some foreign websites targeting China have reported that their sites are now loading six times faster than before. While this is good news for foreign companies wanting to target China, businesses should be aware that they need to comply with China's strict censorship laws. China's internet censorship laws ban pornographic and other “offensive” content, including “the spreading of rumours”. Last year, China made it a criminal offence to broadcast any defamatory content online. A perpetrator can face up to 3 years imprisonment if the information has been viewed by 5,000 people or re-posted 500 times.
