1-Submission to Baidu would not get you any useful traffic unless you have Chinese content. And if you have Chinese content Baidu would find your site anyway if you have some proper linking in place. 2-Translation software is a turn-off for Chinese users, if they come to your site and realize the content is not written by humans, the chances of them staying on your site to go through your translated content is nil. 3-If you are serious about getting traffic and sales from China you will need professional help. Many companies offer packages such as our own Chinese Landing Page Package which will allow you to have at least one page of your site properly translated and optimized in Chinese. 4-Other than the language issue, the two main problems faced by foreign merchants trying to get a piece of the Chinese market are the speed access of foreign sites in China (which is basically behind what is called the "great firewall", meaning longer time to access overseas-hosted websites) and the payment method (credit card penetration is very low and those who have it are very reluctant to use it online especially for overseas websites, Paypal has its own Chinese version which use the non-convertible RMB for transaction). You will need to address those issues as well if you plan to get into China.
Are Hong Kong and Macau considere overseas, as they each have their own top-level domain code? What is currently the most commonly used method for online payments by the Chinese?
Yes, HK, Macau and TW are considered overseas and have their own TLD (respectively .hk, .mo and .tw), they have their own currencies which are convertible. Within mainland China there are many players for online transactions but they are all dependent of China UnionPay, which is a governmental-owned network which covers almost all the banks in activity in China. As you have "Visa" or "Mastercard" or "Plus" logos on bank cards overseas in China you have the "UnionPay" logo on the debit cards issued by Chinese banks. Online payments in China are done using the local currency the Chinese Yuan (or RMB). Foreign currency movements is still very regulated and it is virtually impossible to send USD or other forex to another city or even to another account within the same bank.
When you submit url to there. They will come to your site to review first before release bot to crawl your site because if your content against China government, they will block you! Try it. I got a little bit traffic from baidu.com
The bots have been made "smart" enough to avoid adding to the index politically incorrect pages...No actual human will check your site first after you submit to Baidu. In any case if your site was deemed not acceptable by the Chinese government, chances are it is (or will be) not accessible from China, and since Baidu servers are based in China, the bots can't come to your site anyway...
Why need Chinese traffic? Chinese traffic is the cheapest in the world. Many Chinese webmasters turn to English websites, including me.
Are there any problems with listing on Baidu? Increase of bad bots, spam, anything I should look out for before submitting my site?
I don't if this applies. Coke and Pepsi only hope each Chinese citizen to buy one botttle of their drink a day