by Michał Cukierman
3 min read
Making AEM sites work in China - the real options
by Michał Cukierman
3 min read
First published on LinkedIn
This article was originally published on Michał's LinkedIn. We are republishing it here with subheadings added for clarity.
Do you want your AEM website to work reliably in China? You will be surprised what are the options.
The only fully compliant approach I’ve seen is hosting your publishers inside Mainland China, through a local Chinese company.
It works, but it’s expensive, complex to set up, and doesn’t address integrations with third-party services like search engines or external authentication providers.
The challenge only gets harder if you’re moving to AEMaaCS or Edge Delivery Services with document-based authoring. You can’t spin up your own publishers in China when everything is a managed service. Adobe’s documentation suggests that an in-China CDN will solve the problem, but that only covers static assets - and even then, it won’t help for content that can’t be cached.
A CDN-only approach also fails to satisfy China’s Multi-Level Protection Scheme (MLPS), the mandatory cybersecurity framework that classifies networks into five protection levels. This is often a mandatory requirement for the enterprises.
So what have most companies done? There are two common workarounds:
Static site mirrors. Build a read-only copy of your site and host it in China.
Separate builds. Develop and maintain a distinct site for China - different codebase, tech stack, and workflows.
Both options introduce duplication, limited functionality, and extra overhead.
StreamX Digital Experience Mesh replicates your live site on edge nodes inside Mainland China - fully MLPS-compliant and proven with AEM, Edge Delivery Services, and Adobe Commerce (ready connectors are available). For services that can’t be mirrored, StreamX provides a robust API gateway and microservices framework, so you can handle Chinese-specific integrations without managing a separate deployment.
Architectures are single cluster or cluster mesh deployments, aiming to solve the Great Firewall issues with technology, not more people.
Fig. 1: Single cluster
Fig. 2: Cluster mesh
If you’d like to see architecture examples or learn how StreamX can deliver unbeatable performance, security, and fresh data in China, drop me a line via LinkedIn. I’ll share the detailed documentation I’ve prepared.
We’re also developing a “turn-on” enterprise solution - so you can launch your AEM or EDS-powered site in China with minimal effort and maximum compliance.