As a student studying abroad in Shanghai right now, I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed at which the sites I host at slicehost.com load. Granted, when I ssh in to manage the stack it lags quite a bit, but it seems you'll probably be developing from the US side.
In summary, I think that any good US hosting service probably has reliable speeds in China too.
On a different tangent, I'm currently writing a research paper on differences between US and Chinese business practices. If you could answer some questions, or me to someone that'd be great! ysh4u@virginia.edu