Published by ChinaMNC · Anzhou

Website Identity Certification in China: What the Sichuan Provincial Government Portal's Rating Reveals for Foreign Founders

A practical look at China's website identity (biaoshi) management system, using the Sichuan Provincial Government portal's published evaluation and certification data to show foreign founders what compliance reviews, accessibility scoring and inspection cycles mean for their own China-facing websites.

Why a Government Portal's Rating Matters to Foreign Founders

When foreign founders set up operations in China, they usually focus on company registration, tax filings and banking. The corporate website is often treated as an afterthought. Yet the same identity-management framework that applies to official government sites also shapes how commercial sites are evaluated, certified and inspected. The recently published rating record for the Sichuan Provincial Government portal is a useful concrete example, because it exposes the full structure of that framework in one place: who runs it, how long certification lasts, what gets scored and when inspections occur.

This article walks through that record and translates each element into practical guidance for founders building or operating a China-facing site.

Who Is Behind the Identity System

The record identifies the portal's operating institution as the General Office of the Sichuan Provincial People's Government, classified as a Party and government organ, with the site hosted at www.sc.gov.cn. Its electronic identity number is listed as DZJG20260100003479PW.

More important for founders are the two bodies named in the identity management section. The supervising authority is the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and the issuing body is the Internet Society of China. This division matters: MIIT sets the policy direction, while the Internet Society of China handles issuance of the identity credential itself. If you are planning a commercial site, expect your compliance questions to route through this same pair of institutions, directly or via provincial counterparts.

Certification Validity: A Two-Year Cycle

Both the PC website identity and the WAP (mobile) website identity carry a validity period of two years, running from 27 January 2026 to 26 January 2028. A separate certificate authentication entry shows the same two-year window and the same dates.

What this means in practice

• Identity credentials are time-limited, not permanent. Plan renewal into your annual compliance calendar rather than treating certification as a one-off task.
• PC and mobile properties are certified separately. If you run a responsive site plus a separate mobile domain or app-like mobile site, each needs its own attention.
• The certificate itself is downloadable as a stamped PDF — in this case, an accessibility and age-friendliness evaluation report for the Sichuan portal. For commercial operators, expect documentation you can retain for audit purposes.

Scheduled Inspections, Not Just Initial Approval

The record lists periodic inspection dates of 26 July 2026, 26 January 2027 and 26 July 2027, with the result recorded as passed.

The spacing is instructive. Inspections fall roughly every six months across the two-year validity window, meaning certification is actively maintained rather than passively held. Founders should assume that site content, accessibility features and technical reliability may be re-checked on a similar rhythm, and should build internal processes so that a site does not drift out of compliance between reviews.

How the Evaluation Is Scored

The portal's assessment is split between its PC site and its WAP site, and each is scored across two dimensions.

Accessibility and age-friendliness (适老化) scoring

Each dimension is scored by three parties: self-assessment, institutional assessment and user assessment. On the PC site, self-assessment is 100, institutional assessment 82 and user assessment 83. On the WAP site, the figures are 100, 82 and 81 respectively.

Accessibility (无障碍) scoring

Again three parties score. The PC site records 100 for self-assessment, 83 for institutional assessment and 83 for user assessment. The WAP site records 100, 80 and 82.

Efficiency index

Both PC and WAP sites score 100% on all three efficiency measures: comprehensiveness, reliability and robustness.

Overall scores

The PC site's overall evaluation score is 86.2; the WAP site's is 85.4.

Reading the Scores as a Founder

Several patterns stand out, and each has a practical implication.

• Self-assessment is uniformly perfect; external assessment is not. Every self-assessed figure is 100, while institutional and user scores sit in the low-to-mid 80s. The gap suggests that operators tend to overrate their own compliance. Founders should commission independent reviews rather than relying on internal sign-off.
• User scores differ from institutional scores. On the PC site, users rated age-friendliness higher than institutions did (83 versus 82), while on the WAP site users rated it lower (81 versus 82). Real-user feedback carries weight and can diverge from formal review.
• Mobile scored slightly lower overall. The 85.4 WAP score versus 86.2 for PC hints that mobile experiences are harder to get right — a reminder not to treat the mobile site as a stripped-down copy of the desktop version.
• Technical robustness was fully met. Full marks on comprehensiveness, reliability and robustness indicate that the technical baseline is achievable; the differentiation comes from accessibility and usability for older and disabled users.

Action Points for Your China Site

Drawing the threads together, foreign founders should treat the following as baseline expectations:

1. Identify both the policy supervisor (MIIT) and the issuing body (Internet Society of China) in your compliance mapping, and check whether provincial-level counterparts apply to your registration location.
2. Budget for two-year certification cycles and separate treatment of PC and mobile properties.
3. Anticipate inspections at roughly six-month intervals and keep documentation, including stamped reports, on file.
4. Invest in accessibility and age-friendliness, not just uptime. These are explicitly scored dimensions with published methodologies.
5. Seek external evaluation. The consistent gap between self-assessment and third-party scores shows self-review alone is unlikely to reflect how reviewers and users will judge your site.

Final Note

The Sichuan portal's record is a government example, and the specific figures apply to that site. The structure it reveals — supervising and issuing bodies, two-year validity, periodic inspections, three-party scoring and separate PC and mobile evaluation — is the practical frame foreign founders should use when planning their own China-facing web presence.

This summary is based on information published by the relevant Chinese government website and is general information, not legal or tax advice.