This document describes Salesforce's China product strategy and the features targeted for the initial release.
Opportunity in China and challenges specific to China
The Chinese market offers significant growth opportunities, but operating there requires navigating a distinct set of regulatory, market, and technical challenges that affect every enterprise.
Regulatory
The regulatory environment in China, with respect to data sovereignty, is dynamic and continuously evolving. Regulatory frameworks such as the Cybersecurity Law (CSL), Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), and Data Security Law (DSL) place significant restrictions on how Chinese citizen data should be handled and the consent dynamics needed in order to be able to process or store that information outside of China. As such, many companies opt to store consumer data locally and deploy their infrastructure within the Chinese mainland to ensure compliance with these regulations.
Unique market dynamics
Customer engagement in China works differently. Super Apps — platforms that consolidate multiple services into a single experience — have fundamentally changed how brands interact with customers. These platforms support real-time one-to-one communication across shopping, marketing, and service interactions.
Performance
Cross-region network access can significantly degrade round-trip response times in China. Customers expect fast, reliable application performance, and companies should consider the best ways to mitigate this and ensure the very best experiences for their customers in China.
Salesforce China 360 vision
To address these challenges, Salesforce has partnered with Alibaba Cloud — China's leading cloud computing ecosystem — to deliver a localized Customer 360 for the Chinese mainland. This gives brands a compliant, high-performance CRM foundation built for local market requirements.
Salesforce CRM and Platform Cloud on Alibaba Cloud
Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and the Salesforce Platform are now generally available on Alibaba Cloud infrastructure in the Chinese mainland. Brands can use the World's #1 CRM as the backbone of their China Customer 360 strategy, with access to a full suite of automation and workflow tools for sales and service operations.
Ecommerce and marketing in China
Customer engagement in China requires tools built specifically for the local market. The first product that was launched is Connected Experiences Gateway (CXG), a set of China-specific commerce and marketing products that extends Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud into local digital channels.
CXG includes two components:
Social Commerce: A headless commerce product that supports storefronts on key local channels.
Social Integration: Connects Salesforce CRM with local apps, enabling unified customer data across touchpoints.
Together, these components give brands an integrated connection across engagement, commerce, sales, and service — forming a complete China Customer 360.
Known differences between Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud and Salesforce global
The goal is to keep Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud identical to the global offering wherever compliance allows. The following document describes current differences and will be updated as the product evolves: Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud CRM feature differences (Spring'26 Release)