AEM Site
Performance in China
We tested 106 AEM websites from Beijing, Singapore, Virginia (US), and London (UK). Many failed or slowed significantly when tested from Beijing. These are the results.
The AEM Performance Gap
Most AEM sites didn't finish loading from Beijing
Among sites that loaded successfully in Singapore, the US and the UK, 38% failed to complete the test from China. These are sites running on enterprise-grade infrastructure. The failures point to cross-border delivery issues, not problems with AEM itself.
Enterprise infrastructure didn't prevent the failures
AEM sites typically run on Adobe's managed cloud with global CDNs and edge delivery. They still timed out or stalled from Beijing. Hosting and CDN coverage alone does not guarantee reliable delivery inside China.
Median load time was 7x the 3-second threshold
User experience research typically cites 3 seconds as the threshold for acceptable load time. The median AEM site tested from Beijing took 21.7 seconds to fully load.
Singapore, US and UK results confirm the gap is China-specific
Tests from Singapore, Virginia and London produced similar performance patterns, with success rates between 82–89%. The drop to 59% observed in Beijing is caused by China's unique internet environment affecting cross-border traffic.
High variability in China
Results from Beijing showed far greater spread between median and extreme values than Singapore, the US or UK. This means a higher likelihood of stalled requests, incomplete page loads, or unstable connections.
Even sites that loaded were consistently slower
When AEM sites successfully loaded across all regions, rendering still began later in Beijing 98% of the time and full page completion took 2.7x longer. This pattern appeared across nearly every comparable site, not just outliers.
AEM websites tested from Beijing timed out before finishing
AEM Website Performance by Geography
Speed is only part of the picture. China website performance also means accessibility, deliverability, and stability over time. A page might partially load, but if key resources fail (videos, scripts, third-party tools), the user experience is still broken.
Success Rate by Region
When tested from Beijing, 41% of AEM site tests either exceed 30 seconds or fail to complete, compared with 11–18% in other regions. Beijing produced 3–4x the failure rate of Singapore, the US and the UK. And the sites that did load took significantly longer to become usable.
Nearly 7 in 8 AEM websites either took longer than 10 seconds to load or failed to complete the test from Beijing.
Performance Metrics Breakdown
Fewer requests from Beijing doesn't mean lighter pages. It means many pages never finished loading. Requests stalled, timed out, or failed before the page could complete.
Why AEM sites underperform in China
Every page load depends on three categories of domains. AEM teams control more of the stack than other platforms, but the layers that often cause failures in China sit outside that control.An AEM and Chinafy Case Study
Mandai Wildlife Reserves is a world-leading zoo-management company headquartered in Singapore. Their AEM-powered site loaded normally for visitors globally, but from China, the experience was significantly different. Third-party resources the site depended on, including images, scripts, and tracking tools, were either loading slowly or failing entirely.
Chinafy was added as a bolt-on to their existing AEM setup. No rebuild, no rehosting, no code rewrites. The optimization addressed both infrastructure-based and code-level incompatibilities, including the Adobe ecosystem services and third-party resources the site relied on.
How We Tested
How to interpret this report
Website Performance Metrics
The time from the initial request until the first byte of the response is received. Reflects backend processing network latency, and server responsiveness.
The point in time when the browser first begins to display any visual content (text, images, background) on the screen.
The time when all visible page content has finished rendering and no further visual changes occur above the fold.
The time until the browser fires the onLoad event, indicating that all synchronous page resources have finished loading.
A calculated score that measures how quickly visible content is displayed during page load. Lower scores indicate faster visual progression.
The total number of network requests made to load the page, including HTML, CSS< JavaScript, images, fonts, and third-party resources.
The total amount of data transferred to load the page, typically measured in kilobytes or megabytes.
Largest Contentful Paint measures perceived load speed, Total Blocking Time measures interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift measures visual stability.
Want to see how your AEM website performs in China?
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