Use of microsoft apps in China
 

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has tried to use microsoft teams (video calls/calls/chats) in China. I refer here to a case of a person who is not normally based in China but travelling in China as a temporary visitor, will microsoft apps like teams work normally? Or is it a problem and you need a VPN?

Thanks!

Microsoft apps generally work in China without any intervention.

I interact with colleagues almost on a daily basis who are using Microsoft products in China on an M365 tenant outside of China and it works. There's infrequent occasional challenges with bandwidth for calls because the great firewall in your local region is hitting capacity or is employing some rate shaping, but usually disconnecting and reconnecting fixes that, and a VPN isn't a magic bullet for this issue either, it might help, or it might not.

What you do need to caution against is unexpected dependencies on Google cloud - hard coded DNS for 8.8.8.8, default search provider (switch to bing), Google translate (switch to Microsoft translate) and captchas many of which are Google hosted are common pitfalls.

Also be aware that Google maps are very out of date in China and any western mapping service is going to have an annoying GPS offset that makes the use of the map for accurate location difficult.

Having a roaming SIM card for data access that is tunnelled back to the home GSM network and hence unrestricted is a useful backstop even if you don't intend to use it day to day.

IME, Zoom and Teams usually work better with a VPN (as long as you choose a good server, of course). Same goes for OneDrive.

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Agree, there are days when using the native network connection is more challenging, the performance is variable.

The team I interface with are generally happy to do what they need which is really focussed on use of OneDrive and SharePoint and Outlook with some Teams without VPN, they only revert to using a VPN by exception.

2025 ?
 

Any 2025 updates on this Microsoft issues? And do you still need a vpn to access LI ?
I'm going to buy one of those $500 new Dell laptops for my fall trip (90 days) to China and appropriately load the software. My good laptop will stay in the west this year.

Microsoft apps and teams /outlook all worked well when I was there in March 2025. No need for VPN.

Hope your correct. just that in some areas of BJ, (Haidian)the sensors have the juice turned up on some weekdays.