I think his implication was that while 65/35 is fast by almost any standards, accessing sites outside of China does not result in these speeds.

My office in Shanghai has a T1, and it's still not especially fast.

However, I have one friend who has a hardware based VPN, and his internet simply sails over a normal residential China Telecom connection. I looked into getting one myself, but decided that the price was a bit rich for my budget (y3,000/month).