Internaut you said you were going to China with a UK CMLink SIM card. When you were there did this SIM card allow you to access Google services and other services that are typically blocked in China, for example WhatsApp, Facebook etc. without needing a VPN?

I usually get a HK SIM card with a roaming package when travelling in China but am contemplating a UK China Mobile SIM (CMLink).

I confirm I was on the Western side of the Great Firewall so was able to access Google, FaceBook and so on. It’s not perfect. My fellow Brit who teaches there could not send me a text message from his local Chinese SIM, for example.

People still use SMS?

The friend's phone service was probably set to domestic calls only. Open international service on your Chinese SIM and you should be able to text overseas phone numbers.

He has long been able to send SMS to my main UK number. He has dumb phone (yes, he lives in China, has a dumb phone and uses cash only) and has so far resisted my attempts to give him a smartphone.

Thanks for confirming Internaut , I might give CMLink UK a go this time.

Roaming on any SIM will get you unfiltered Internet access (unless of course the country of the SIM's home network filters the Internet too!)

One reason to roam in China on a SIM where the home network is in HK rather than one where the home network is much further away is performance. It may not matter to you if you just want to browse, but if you need good Internet access for work, roaming on an HK SIM gives excellent speeds, very similar to non-roaming speeds, whereas roaming on (e.g.) a UK SIM is quite noticeably slower.

For those that are interested, this is because roaming is effectively implemented as a VPN back to the home network -- all your Internet traffic is being routed back to the home network, which introduces a lot of extra latency if the home network is far away.

What do you use?

Wechat, Whatsapp, FBM. Line (rarely).

I always try to avoid giving any information to social media companies if I can help it. These companies have no one's best interests in mind except their own, and they'll sell out all of your personal data for profit if they have a chance to do so (and many of them have plenty of chances to do so). You've got Facebook, which likely threw the 2016 election in the US, and has stated that they have no problems with taking money to run ads that are demonstrably false, and then you've got Tencent/WeChat, which is widely thought to share personal private information with the Chinese government. So SMS avoids that by only giving information to the phone company. Sure, phone companies can store it, but they haven't been able to successfully monetize it (at least not yet). Although it's my understanding that unlike LTE data, SMS messages aren't encrypted all the way back to the home network, which means that even if I'm roaming in a foreign country, the company that operates the network there would be able to see all of my SMS messages too. Even better, I also use Signal, which gives only metadata, but not message contents, to the Signal Foundation, and not much else to anyone else, except the fact that I sent/received a Signal message at a given date/time.

While I respect your moral standpoint, text messages are even more useless than email if you actually want to communicate with other people.

Nothing wrong with SMS. This is what I use every day and so do everybody that I know. My kids sometimes like to use Facebook messenger.
What is useless about text messages? I don't even need to write them, I dictate my messages. Simple and quick.
I don't know what you mean by useless. It is actually simpler and people that I communicate with do not need to be on the same app as me or on any app.

Agreed: app-based communication can be great, but only if all one's contacts use the app, and in the same way. This is almost true in China with WeChat, with one major exception: I have purposefully chosen not to install Wechat on my desktop/laptop...so the endless attachment sending and editing by WeChat sends me nuts...it's just as easy to send by email...except for the fact that Chinese people tend not to check their emails more than once a day...

This 'mental block' that there is only one possible way to do things is very symptomatic of our current state of affairs.

tb

In light of the fact that we are way off topic, I will comment only briefly :
1. If you want to msg others, use channels that they care about
2. as crazy as this may sound, I honestly do msg team members whenever there is a semi urgent email
-I don't believe this is a China specific issue because I witnessed the same when I was in the US

You just use whatever method of communication that your paying customer uses, be SMS, WhatsApp, WeChat, FB Messenger or carrier pigeon.

You just need to set up your account with minimal exposure.

Be right back, need to go feed the pigeons.:D