When combined, 网盘 (wǎngpán) literally translates to “network disk,” a perfectly descriptive name for a cloud storage service.
In the West, services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud are common, but in China, the 网盘 (wǎngpán) ecosystem is on another level of integration and scale. Due to the Great Firewall, most Western cloud services are blocked or unreliable, creating a massive domestic market dominated by local giants like Baidu and Alibaba. The key cultural difference lies in user expectations and the business model. Chinese 网盘 services historically attracted users by offering enormous amounts of free storage—often 1 or 2 Terabytes (TB) for free upon signup. This is a stark contrast to the 5-15 Gigabytes (GB) typically offered for free by Western counterparts. This “freemium” model, however, comes with a catch: free users often experience extremely slow download speeds, pushing them to subscribe to a premium membership for usable performance. As a result, the 网盘 has become the default method for sharing large files. Instead of emailing a large attachment, people share a 网盘 link and an “extraction code” (提取码 - tíqǔ mǎ). This is ubiquitous for sharing everything from pirated movies and software (a common grey-area usage) to university lecture notes and family photos. This reliance on a few domestic providers also means user data is centralized and subject to government monitoring, a privacy trade-off that is a known aspect of the Chinese internet.
Using a 网盘 is a daily activity for many students, office workers, and general internet users in China.
The term 网盘 is used informally and formally. You might ask a colleague, “Can you send me the file via 网盘?” or see it referenced in official company documents for file-sharing protocols.