Any social media site you are accustomed to in the western world is blocked here -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatApp, etc. Top level news is hit or miss, the old traditional ones are blocked, Reuters, NY Times, Time, etc. But some other new sources are accessible -- Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Daily Beast, Politico, HuffPost to name a few that I frequent (except for Fox
).
Google is not accessible, but Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo are available. When I arrive I usually set one of the browsers on my phone to default to Bing. Is it as good as Google? I think not, but it gets by.
I'm not sure about Remote PC, my company uses Fortinet for remote access, essentially opens a VPN. It does work, but I don't use it often. Our office here has a private line back to our NY office and I usually remote over that.
Are VPN's illegal? I think so, but many of us on here are using one or more. Many of my local coworkers also use them. Scroll back on this thread to find much discussion on VPNs. I use ExpressVPN.
Also, check out your international roaming plan offered by your carrier. Many of my US coworkers use T-Mobile with international data roaming. I'm not sure of the specifics but they get a fair amount of data. If you are roaming with a carrier outside of China it will bypass the great firewall. In the US, I use Verizon which is not great for international roaming. Last year, I picked up a SIM card in Hong Kong with data roaming in China Service is very fast and bypasses the firewall also.