AWS China — overview, services, and what differs from global AWS
AWS China runs on separate accounts and operators in Beijing and Ningxia — not a global region toggle. As of 2026-02-28, the official table lists 120 services; core IaaS/PaaS is strong, but GenAI and several app platforms are absent.
Amazon Web Services in China (AWS China) is a separate cloud partition inside Mainland China — operated in Beijing by Beijing Sinnet Technology and in Ningxia by Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology (NWCD). It is not a region on your global AWS account.
Teams that assume one AWS Organization spans Global and China usually hit the wall at account creation, endpoint selection, or architecture review — when a global service simply does not appear in the China regional table.
Compared with Azure China, AWS China’s catalog gap is somewhat smaller, but China is still not a full mirror of Global. Core IaaS and PaaS coverage is relatively complete; generative AI, several application platforms, customer-engagement SaaS, and newer DevEx services are the main holes.
Catalog snapshot (2026-02-28)
We parsed the official AWS China services by region page, last updated 2026-02-28. The table lists 120 service rows.
| Coverage | Count |
|---|---|
| Available in Beijing and Ningxia | 102 |
| Beijing only | 9 |
| Ningxia only | 9 |
Row counts understate SKU and feature differences within a service. For sign-off, cross-check each required service against the official table and China-specific documentation — not the global AWS product page alone.
Regions
AWS China has two regions: Beijing (cn-north-1, Sinnet) and Ningxia (cn-northwest-1, NWCD). AWS Global currently advertises 39 geographic regions and 123 Availability Zones — a different scale and operator model entirely.
Control plane and account model
| Dimension | AWS Global | AWS China |
|---|---|---|
| Operators | AWS / Amazon Web Services | Sinnet (Beijing), NWCD (Ningxia) |
| Account | Global AWS account | Separate China account — Global cannot access China resources and vice versa |
| Regions | Global region set | Beijing + Ningxia only |
| Public content | Standard domains / CDN / public publish | Public-facing content typically requires ICP filing; without filing, accounts may remain Internal Access |
| Service catalog | Broadest AWS portfolio | 120 rows in the official regional table; features and SKUs need per-service verification |
| Console / endpoints | aws.amazon.com, global partitions | amazonaws.cn partition and China-specific endpoints |
Migration means a new account, new IAM baseline, redeployed stacks, and re-wired integrations — not adding a China region to an existing Global payer.
Obtaining a China account (PRC entity)
AWS China offers self-service online registration for PRC-registered companies only — individual accounts are not supported.
The standard flow:
- Register a China payer account on the AWS China site with a valid business license (营业执照).
- Provide account administrator contact details; AWS China validates them in real time.
- On approval, the account is provisioned immediately.
- Complete initial setup: finance and security contacts; fapiao (invoice) information pending confirmation by the China operating company’s back office.
- After verification, an AWS China account manager typically contacts you and may grant CNY 200 in credits for testing.
Foreign-owned teams without a PRC entity cannot use this self-service path directly. They need a local operating company or a landing partner arrangement before a payer account can be opened. Start an assessment if you need a predictable onboarding path alongside filing and architecture work.
Customer-facing workloads still require ICP filing before public go-live and PSB filing where applicable — see our ICP and PSB guide.
Strong coverage by service domain
Source: AWS China services by region, parsed 2026-02-28.
| Service domain | Representative China services | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | EC2, EBS, Auto Scaling, Batch, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, Fargate | Core compute largely available |
| Containers | ECS, EKS, ECR, App Mesh | Container mainline available |
| Storage | S3, Glacier, EFS, FSx family, Storage Gateway, Backup, DataSync | Strong coverage |
| Databases | RDS, Aurora MySQL/PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, ElastiCache, MemoryDB, Neptune, Keyspaces, Timestream | Mainstream databases well covered |
| Analytics | Athena, EMR, Redshift, Glue, Lake Formation, MSK, MWAA, OpenSearch, Kinesis, Firehose | Analytics and streaming reasonably complete |
| Network | VPC, ELB, PrivateLink, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, Network Firewall, WAF | Core networking available |
| Security / governance | IAM, IAM Identity Center, KMS, ACM, Private CA, Secrets Manager, GuardDuty, Inspector, Security Hub, Config, CloudTrail | Security baseline available |
| DevOps / delivery | CodeBuild, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CloudFormation, Cloud Control API | Foundational CI/CD available |
Beijing vs Ningxia — regional splits
Nine services appear in only one China region. Plan multi-region architecture and DR accordingly.
| Beijing only | Ningxia only |
|---|---|
| Amazon Cognito | Amazon CloudFront |
| Amazon Kinesis Video Streams | Amazon Route 53 |
| Amazon Deep Learning AMIs | Amazon WorkSpaces |
| Amazon IoT Events | Amazon Budgets |
| Amazon IoT SiteWise | Amazon Cost Explorer |
| Amazon IoT TwinMaker | Cost and Usage Report |
| Amazon IoT Greengrass | AWS Elemental MediaConvert |
| Amazon Personalize | AWS Marketplace |
| Amazon QuickSight | Amazon Polly |
Notable gaps vs AWS Global
The following Global services are common in architecture references but do not appear in the AWS China regional table as of 2026-02-28. Treat them as unavailable in China unless a newer table row proves otherwise.
| Category | Representative gaps |
|---|---|
| Generative AI | Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, Amazon Q Developer, Amazon Q Business |
| AI / ML managed APIs | Rekognition, Comprehend, Textract, Translate, Lex (not listed in China table) |
| Application platforms | AWS App Runner, AWS Amplify Hosting, AWS Proton |
| Customer engagement | Amazon Connect, Pinpoint, SES |
| Edge / hybrid | Local Zones, Outposts, Wavelength |
| Data / business SaaS | Clean Rooms, DataZone, FinSpace, Entity Resolution |
| Advanced security | Macie, Detective, Verified Access, Shield Advanced |
| Observability (newer) | Managed Grafana, Managed Prometheus, Application Signals |
ACM and TLS certificates
Unlike Azure China App Service — which does not document a free managed certificate — AWS China lists Amazon Certificate Manager (ACM) and AWS Private CA in both Beijing and Ningxia.
ACM China documentation states that ACM can create, store, and renew public and private SSL/TLS certificates, and ACM-managed certificates incur no additional certificate charge. Binding still depends on the integrating service and region — for example ELB and API Gateway support ACM in documented patterns.
CloudFront is listed only in Ningxia and cannot use ACM-managed free certificates in the same way as Global CloudFront + ACM pairings; teams may need CLI-driven renewal workflows or alternate certificate strategies for CDN-fronted properties.
Service availability matrix (AWS Global vs AWS China)
Yes = listed for that China region in the official table; No = not listed; Partial = listed with documented China limitations or single-region only.
| Service | Beijing | Ningxia | Global | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | China account, quotas, and instance families need separate verification |
| S3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Domain, filing, and public-publish policy differ from Global |
| CloudFront | No | Yes | Yes | China table lists Ningxia only |
| Route 53 | No | Yes | Yes | China table lists Ningxia only |
| ACM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free managed SSL/TLS certificates supported |
| Cognito | Yes | No | Yes | China table lists Beijing only |
| Amazon Bedrock | No | No | Yes | Not listed in China regional table |
| AWS App Runner | No | No | Yes | Not listed in China regional table |
| Amazon SES | No | No | Yes | Not listed in China regional table |
| Amazon Connect | No | No | Yes | Not listed in China regional table |
| Lambda | Yes | Yes | Yes | Core serverless available |
| EKS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Container orchestration available |
| RDS / Aurora | Yes | Yes | Yes | Confirm engine/version per region |
| DynamoDB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Available |
| VPC / ELB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Core networking available |
| GuardDuty | Yes | Yes | Yes | Confirm feature parity vs Global |
When AWS China fits
Choose AWS China when residency, regulator expectations, or domestic integration require workloads inside Mainland China — and you can sustain a China-local operating model: separate payer account, Sinnet/NWCD support channels, filing, and a catalog-trimmed reference architecture.
It is usually the wrong first answer when the problem is reachability of a global AWS footprint to China users. For a side-by-side sovereign-cloud read, see Azure China. For provider-neutral route selection, see How we choose providers without selling them or start a China Readiness Assessment.
Minimum diligence before sign-off: verify every required service in both target regions where DR matters; confirm ICP status before public DNS cutover; scope IaC and CI/CD to the China partition; diff GenAI and app-platform dependencies early.
References
- AWS China — Amazon services by region — source for catalog counts above; last checked 2026-02-28
- AWS China — accounts and credentials
- AWS China — ACM overview
- AWS Global — products and infrastructure
- Azure China — overview and comparison — Chinaready guide
- ICP and PSB filing for foreign companies — Chinaready guide
