They’re saying for use in China lol (using HK servers). For a long time ExpressVPN was the defacto VPN for China. Today all off the shelf options will have some level of reliability issues. The ones that work best are usually a little sketchy so you need to feel comfortable trusting them with all of your internet data. Best option is to set up your own bespoke VPN server. This is cheaper in the long run, more reliable, more private, and more secure.

Oh I thought you meant VPNs to use whilst in China
I can’t really think of an option for VPNs with servers in China right now. Try Bing Maps for route plannings whilst outside? It’s not the most up-to-date but mostly works.

If you’re looking for VPN that’s relatively cheap and fast enough for short-term use in China, there’s a term called “airport” that I can’t get further into here on FT. Ask a Chinese friend on a non-Chinese social media.

On another note, none of the Hyatts that I know of in Beijing has enterprise network infrastructures that “isn’t affected by the Great Firewall”. The only Hyatt property where you can use Google and Netflix (HK) just fine is the Hyatt Place in Dongmen, Shenzhen; but it’s been a few years since my last visit.

Yeah … with all due respect, I’d say it’s a laughable suggestion for OP as a short-term tourist, not to mention the “more reliable” part.

Without getting to the nitty-gritty, they’ve really enhanced the Great Firewall probably since your last visit. It’s a joke these days to just install V2Ray or Shadowsocks, or any other traditional VPN protocol that GFW bans within ten seconds on a server you see fit (for which its IP is probably banned already by the GFW if you’re on a major IDC) and call it a day.

If you’ve currently got a VPN server on a legacy protocol, great. But I’m pretty sure it’s unusable in CN without some heavy modifications that involve purchasing domain names, building web servers, and setting up an unfamiliar protocol for non-Chinese users.

It is not a recommendation for a short-term tourist. Of course they would be better off using an off the shelf VPN lol.

My bespoke VPN, set up and maintained by my IT team for my employees in China, works as of March 2023, when I was last in the mainland. The Chinese gov will actually sanction many bespoke VPNs for many reasonably sized businesses.

Best option for who then? The OP you replied to is clearly a short-term tourist. They might’ve looked into building VPN servers, wasting a bunch of time and getting nowhere.

All I can say is they went the cheap route.

If you read the post you’re quoting, you may be able to discern your answer within the text itself.

It only makes sense in the long run. If you are a short term tourist, it should be common sense that setting up anything bespoke is excessive.

Whatever works, works! I asked an employee to come up with a solution and they have come up with one that has worked reliably and quickly for years and years. I don’t need to follow what changes happen with the great firewall because my IT people are paid to figure it out. I would be very annoyed having to constantly track this stuff. Easier for me to stick with my single bespoke option and spend my time elsewhere. I also have a friend with a company VPN sanctioned by the Chinese government but I have almost never used it because I prefer not unnecessarily sharing my internet history with third parties.

Your discernment is far from obvious, especially the narrative of “the best option is” sentence without a context. Should the OP have little experiences with VPNs and IT overall, they may forgo your later description of “in the long-run” or not connect “long-run” with “dedicated IT teams” and a lot of hassle.

Again, based on our previous engagements, it’s suffice to say we’re differently opinionated on many subjective topics, and I’m not interested in playing the “who’s right” game any further. The objective here is to assist the OP.

Just stick to whatever works, less you know the nitty-gritty on these stuff the better.

Can’t provide any more insights into this topic on FT unfortunately, and all I can say was my last reply — companies who got their VPN banned probably went the cheap way.

Yes, it seems you are very fixated on semantics. It only makes sense in the long run as stated clearly in the post you quoted. I cannot help it if someone chooses to ignore text in my post that qualifies my statement. It is also pointless to argue semantics about qualifying a statement, especially when the qualifier is in the text you quoted yourself.

I have no idea who you are.

Thankful my VPN has worked since 2017 without being banned! No idea what methodology they used but it seems like they did not go the budget way based on your heuristic.

I use Amap and Baidu Maps because I have an Android. I also use a V (a$$.) most of the time. Many Chinese apps (e.g. in addition to map stuff, alipay, eleme, taobao, etc) work best when I exclude them (split tunneling). A also has a feature called smart mode that effectively does the same thing, but I prefer the exclusion method myself because it gives me more control.

Split tunneling is definitely a huge benefit in China

Yes using a VPN works. It's not just the IP though, you need to make sure that your DNS is Chinese too.

Almost every smaller VPN service now prefer Clash as Client instead. and my experience with many of them is quite good. But I would recommend not purchasing an annual plan but instead paying monthly. Most of them are around 1RMB per day.

This makes me miss 2019, when Taiwan Mobile first started offering roaming on prepaid and mainland China was only 600NTD for unlimited data for a week. I just started doing that for reliability reasons. Then they probably had too many people like me and they now throttle after 5GB. EDIT: They did cut the price to 350NTD, though, so it's not as egregious as if they were trying to sell 5GB for 600NTD.

300GB for 25-35RMB per month is currently the average price for Chinese VPN services, and all of them use Clash as client which have a Traffic Mode.

A is better.