Why Unifying Global and China eCommerce Operations Is So Complex, and How to Do It Right 

Virto Commerce has deployed B2B ecommerce platforms in China for global manufacturers, handling data sovereignty, ICP compliance, and integration patterns where support from others is often limited. This expertise from real-world rollouts—like optical equipment manufacturers replatforming after 13 years—guides our insights. 

Can you just extend your global ecommerce platform into China? 

No.  

Most of the time, with the rarest of exceptions, the answer to that would be No. Unless you’re willing to go through significant architectural challenges, make operational compromises, and extend your project timeline by at least two times the original plan.  

But frankly, the challenge with China ecommerce rollout is not so much about the technical capabilities, but rather the regulatory requirements, the technical infrastructure, and unique local business practices. All that creates a fundamental conflict with how ecommerce operations are typically structed globally.  

• Your data needs to flow freely across the global organization, but it must stay within Chinese borders.  
• Systems that work well around the world struggle with China’s network topology.  
• Your tried-and-tested best practices do not align with Chinese buyer expectations.  

This creates a tension for every B2B enterprise.  

So how do you maintain global operations while meeting China’s rigid requirements?  

The answer lies in architecting a system that accommodates both.

Tip: China’s ecommerce market offers massive opportunities, but as outlined in our guide “Launching eCommerce in China: Everything B2B Enterprises Need to Know”, success demands more than localization. It's about navigating ICP licenses, data sovereignty, and local infrastructure from day one. Read the full guide for deeper insights into B2B launch requirements.   

Data localization requirement in China creates a unique unification challenge.  

According to the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and Data Security Law, all data collected in China must stay in China. Cross-border transfers are possible, but require an official explicit permission, and even then, it’s scrutinized and limited.   

Your ecommerce platform in China collects customer data (names, contact information, payment details, browsing history). Under PIPL, this data is stored on servers that are physically located in China. A simple data replication or transfer to your global CRM for analytics, customer service, or reporting is not possible.   

This isn’t a theoretical tension.  

Data-localization measures bloom around the world and have more than doubled between 2017 and 2021, leading to a drop in global productivity by 0.7%.  

In China, only 25% of all cross-border data export applications were approved in 2024, creating a serious data fragmentation challenge despite available technology. The regulatory framework creates an inherent conflict between business integration needs and localization rules.  

The sovereignty-integration tension manifests in specific operational challenges that affect daily business.  

• Inventory synchronization: When selling physical products, inventory availability must be accurate. Chinese customers shouldn’t have access to global stock, but the system needs to check global inventory without creating compliance issues, such as personal data transfer. A careful API design will separate inventory queries from customer context. 
• Order orchestration: When an order is placed, the dataflows to (often global) fulfillment systems. As order contains personal information—shipping address and contact details—and operational insights—SKUs, quantities, and shipping instructions—that need to reach the warehouse management system. Separating these data types requires advanced integration architecture.  
• Customer identity: Handling authentication and identity of multinational B2B customers with registered users in several countries is a whole other challenge. Chinese and French purchasing managers both need access to the contract pricing and approvals, yet their personal data must remain in respective regions. This issue can be overcome, for example, with regional user profiles with separated business-level relationships.  
• Business intelligence: Company analytics aren’t useful unless you include all markets’ data. Providing global visibility without violating local rules with edge analytics—data is processed in China and shipped as aggregated insights, anonymizing data before export, or split analytics architecture—analytics are gathered separately in all regions and consolidated later in one report.   
• Development workflow: Choosing between a shared codebase with regional variations and separate codebases is complicated. On top of that, code deployment to Chinese infrastructure requires different processes than your standard CI/CD pipelines.  
• Business process alignment: Business practices in China differ vastly from global norms when it comes to payment terms, product bundling, contract negotiation, and customer relationship management. Companies must accommodate local differences while maintaining consistency for global processes to function. 
• Incident response: Outages, data breaches, and compliance violations must be handled accounting for regional data boundaries. Resolving issues that affect Chinese customers will often require different tools and access patterns than the company’s standard incident response plan.  
• On-going compliance management: China is known for releasing regular updates to its cybersecurity and data protection frameworks. An ecommerce in China must monitor possible changes in regulations and adapt quickly.  

China is such a unique case that many enterprises tend to underestimate how much more and the level of investment the Chinese market requires.  

It’s tempting to treat it like any region, but the plug-it-with-minimal-modification method fails consistently. According to Japan’s Research Institute, foreign company withdrawals exceed new investments. Floship reports that as many as 48% of foreign businesses fail in China within first two years.  

While each business has its own reasons why Chinese expansion doesn’t work, the failure to properly unify Chinese and global operations is a common pitfall.  

Here is the business case for proper unification.  

• Reduced operational costs over time: The upfront cost is higher, but a properly architected system requires less manual reconciliation, duplicate development, and compliance firefighting. 
• Lower compliance risks: Purpose-build data governance leaves less room for costly violations, fines, reputational damage, and operational restrictions. 
• Greater scalability: Once you’ve launched in China, replicating the success across other regulated markets becomes easier. Chinese rollout becomes a template and stimulates sustainable scalability. 
• Faster time to market: Proper unification creates solid integration patterns, making the launch of new capabilities in China more efficient, rather than requiring custom development for each new initiative.  
• Better customer experience: B2B customers expect seamless experience across regions. Proper unification makes it happen without compromising compliance.   

There are four architectural patterns that companies choose from when planning ecommerce launch in China. Each comes with its own tradeoffs.