Today, the 2012 Olympic Games will open in London.  A routine visit to the London 2012 website revealed something that amazed our China-watching antennae.

Visit the website now, and scroll to the bottom, you will find, in almost invisible grey font, a tiny line which we’ve highlighted below:

Official London 2012 website, fully approved by the Chinese central government’s relevant organ.

Experienced China hands are already chuckling and shaking their heads.

However, readers who do not spend their days studying and working in the minutiae of the Chinese goverment’s, um, diverse, regulatory environment may be wondering what an ICP filing number is. If so, good question.

An ICP, or “Internet Content Provider” filing number is a kind of Chinese business approval license, as you may have already suspected. Its a privilege, not a right, to have a website in China.  According to Chinese laws and regulations, all websites based in China must acquire such a license before being able to operate legally. “Based in China” typically means:

• The domain is issued by the Chinese government organ which controls .cn domain name space;
• Or the server is physically located in China;
• Or the company operating the website is properly incorporated in China (whether they be domestic or foreign).

It makes us wonder: why does London Olympic Games’ website need the approval of The Central People’s Government of People’s Republic of China?

There are several possibilities we’ve considered (you may have different theories, which we’d love to hear about in the comments section, below):

• The website is hosted in China. But this doesn’t make sense. China isn’t a country especially well known for great IT infrastructure, and its internet “pipes” to the world are horrifically constrained by both technical and, um, regulatory reasons. Why not just put the server in the UK or base it in the US?
• LOCOG is incorporated in China. Again, this doesn’t make much sense. This third London Olympics is the pride of UK.
• They want to attract Chinese visitors. If so, why acquire a Chinese ICP license without offering a Chinese version of the website? At the top of the home page, there is a language switch… but only between English and Français. Plus, the website has a substantial number of services that can’t be accessed by Chinese users, namely Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
• Or the London team has considered the possibility of the website being blocked by China’s Great Firewall (“#GFW” on Twitter), and hopes an ICP license will gain the website a free GFW pass? This may be the most likely answer, although regulatory compliance is absolutely no guarantee that your site won’t be blocked by the GFW.

In our opinion, this maneuver isn’t going to help London 2012:

• If you just want Chinese netizens to use your service,and you’re not promoting it widely in China, an ICP license is really unnecessary. There are millions of websites do not have the license but still easily accessible by Chinese people. For example: Last.fm
• If you want to establish the website as a Chinese-friendly service, an ICP license is the least of the challenge. Much more important for a Chinese audience is a Chinese user interface!
• If you just want to please Beijing… well, the job is half done. What’s left is to make the ICP license number bigger, stronger, more obvious (not greyed out to the point of being invisible, as in the London 2012 example).
• If the tactic is for a GFW pass, well, forget about it. China’s relevant government organs can revoke any ICP, at any time, when a leader feels a website is ungood. An ICP license doesn’t produce a protective aura around your online chakras.

With all that said, we wish London a successful Olympic Games!

If any of our readers want to know more about China’s ICP licensing system, feel free to ask us about it.

UPDATE: NEW YORK CITY 2012-07-27 15:25:  According to the Taipei Times, LOCOG told its reporter that London 2012 applied for an ICP because without one it would not have been possible to host some of its content in a China-based Content Delivery Network (CDN) service. However following reports such as ours, the London spokesperson said the ICP was removed from its website to “minimize confusion”.