Hi,

If I am a Hong Kong Citizen and I want to start a web business in
China, What do I need to do?  I know technical what I need to setup,
this question pertains to the legal and accounting aspects.  The
business is a entertainment focused portal selling google ads.

From a legal, tax, and accounting perspective, what do I need to setup
this business?


In addition, the web business will provide a forum.  What software do
I need to put in to filter out the sensitive contents?

To start a website is very easy, I think the most importantly is how
to get the payment from mainland. It is stricted to send money to
other countries including HK.

I 'm from China and I know how to sell google ads. as a chinese ,I
like using the search engine of  baidu more. and It's vevy easy to
sell google ads just only you have a credit card,you can set up an
account to sell your ads.
    jason from China.

What do you mean by selling google ads? Google doesn't have any ads to sell.

Do you mean helping people to advertise on google? So people pay you
and you go to your Adword account to advertise for them?

Or do you mean running a entertainment portal and putting Adsense Ads?
For this why do you need to start it in China? You can start it
anywhere, including HK. All you have to do is to promote it to people
in China. You collect money from Google.

For the first case you will need to set up a corporate entity in
China. Just go across the ShenZhen and check out the many company
registration (????) service. Most of the offer a one stop service for
around 2000yuan.

For forum software, many of them has keyword filters so you can block
out sensitive word. For a start you should patrol the forum. When you
make enough, hire a mainland chinese to patrol it.

Good luck!

Hi 59ideas-ga,

Thank you for your feedback.  I intend to run a entertainment portal
and put up Adsense Ads.  The reason I want to start it in China is
because of speed.  I heard it is slow for mainland chinese to access
web servers in the US.

However, it seems pretty complicated to setup a website in mainland
due to ICP licenses and so on...

HI,
  I think it is a good idea that you are going to start a web business
in China.Because it has some advantages that HK did not has,such as
lower labor salary,more hight quality human resouces,a biger consume
market than HK,the good Internet basic structure and environment.China
has the most population of the world.From the census of Cnnic(China)
of year 2006,the "net people" (people that use Internet)number
is:1,110,000,000.(quote:http://www.cnnic.cn/images/2006/download/2006011701.pdf)

  Some infomation for you as below may be useful:
2 big step:1,register a company in China;2,get an ICP licence

First of all, you must REGISTER a company in China.

KEY WORD:1,THE LAW OF COMPANY OF THE P.R.CHIHA;2,local Business Administration 

REGISTER PROCESS:
Step1,Please refer to THE LAW OF COMPANY OF THE PEOPLE REPUBLIC OF
CHINA,many key of your questions in it.
Step2,Named a Firm,and put it to the local Business Administration to
get the "Firm admit process",after that the local Business
Administration will give you an Adress of Firm pre-admission.
Step3,After the Firm admitted,go to the local Business Administraion
again and get the form including : Trust Deed,Company Establish Submit
and so on,filled them.
Step4,1)Prepare: Decision of Partner meeting ,including: capital
provider,the number of capital,office adress,elected the
director,elect the supervisor and so on.
      2)Prepare:Decision of directors meeting,including:elect the
board chairman and so on.
      3)Prepare:Decison of suervisor meeting,including:elect the supervisor.
Step5,Setup the Company Rule.
Step6,Have the accounting firm to provide a Capital report.
Step7,Rent a office address,rent contract and the copy of Possession
certification of the office is needed for the register procession.
Step8,Give the information we mentioned above to the local Bussiness
Administration and register your company.And the fee you will be
informed by the process of step 8.


After that,you must REGISTER a ICP(Internet Content Provider) licence.
About ICP licence,Please refer to:
http://www.zca.gov.cn/promu_detail.asp?id=396

if you know Chinese,you can get the useful information on the web page below:
http://www.gdca.gov.cn
http://www.szds.gov.cn/
http://www.szaic.gov.cn/
http://www.sz.gov.cn
http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/share/FAQs.htm

I hope that information can help you.

ps:
the accounting perspective:(as a small enterprise)
1,to own a Server and server administration will cost 1,2000yuan/per year;
2,register a company will cost 2,000-3,000yuan;
3,an IT labour's salary on the average is 2,000-4,000yuan/per year;
4,to rent a office in Chinese is depends on where you rent,if you rent
it in SHENZHEN city,it cost about 8,000yuan/50 centiares/per month;
5,to get a ICP licence will cost about 3,000yuan
6,others payout will cost about 5,000yuan(god knows!)

Some forum software you can run to filter out the sensitive contents:
here are the forum softwares recommend:
I.TYPE OF CGI:

leobbs:http://www.leobbs.com/ 
 
II.TYPE OF PHP:
discuz! :http://www.discuz.net 
phpwind board :http://www.phpwind.net 

III.TYPE OF ASP:
DVBBS : http://www.dvbbs.net
leadbbs : http://www.leadbbs.com

I hope the information can help you.:)

To get an ISP license is quite difficult, many chinese website just
use non-trade ICP lisence and it is free. Most of small and medium
companies just use free ICP lisence.

THe better way is that you register a company in HK and set up a branch in China. 

Almost all famous bulletins has the filter function.
Vbulletin :http://www.vbulletin.com
discuz! :http://www.discuz.net 
phpwind board :http://www.phpwind.net