Great Firewall of China
 

Hello, I'm traveling to China for a few months or maybe even more and I've heard about the Great Firewall of China. I need to access Facebook and a few different sites for work purposes, so I think that I need a VPN. And there are so many! I am thinking about Nord, Express or Surfshark, the last one is the cheapest so I am leaning to it. So anyway, what are your thoughts? Do you use anything?

I'm afraid we don't have many options for VPN in China. Can't speak for the other two, but the last time I was there I used ExpressVPN and everything worked as expected. Found it easy to use and I could connect three of my devices without any problems.

How did you miss the enormous thread on this topic?

Here's a link to VPNs that MAY work in China. It's a spotty thing at best and most vloggers do advise that...

https://www.techradar.com/news/best-...-5-top-choices

That said, if you have a spare computer at home, maybe set up something with teamviewer or anydesk that you can remote into. Also, set up a hotmail or yahoo email address so you can transfer files back and forth. Google related services will not work and with spotty VPN coverage, you should have a backup.

In the China forum:

I would suggest getting a data SIM in Hong Kong that also works in China - you can use your phone as a hotspot, or get two SIM cards and buy an unlocked hotspot to use as a home router plus your phone. The data will route through Hong Kong and will not be censored.

A lot of my friends do the HK thing, but a local SIM plus express works pretty well, as long as you optimize.

I asked the same question in this forum before a month. Just came back from China. I can confirm that Surfshark works without any problem there.

Wouldn't a VPN connection slow things down vs a SIM card running LTE without a VPN, but routing through HK?

Not ime.

One thing to be careful about. Connectivity doesn't always work. I've had VPNs while visiting and the consistency isn't there. A corporate one from my employer would work fine. But the commercial ones are a bit flakey... one would work fine, then stop a day or two later. Another one took a half hour before establishing a connection... Depends on the load of the GFOC as well as amount of activity and type of connection I suspect.

Commercial VPNs are pretty responsive these days. You might experience a bit of a slowdown, but not much (maybe 5% if at all). My concern with a VPN (at least with phones and tablets) is that they run down the battery faster. Getting a SIM card to route through HK would bypass that issue...

That really depends on the VPN. A good VPN with quality servers and good bandwidth into and out of their endpoints won't cause any appreciable bottleneck. A cheap VPN with low in/out bandwidth on their endpoints will slow things down significantly.

Personally, I use VyprVPN using their Chameleon protocol when I'm in China... it's the one my company IT recommends for employees travelling to China, and I've never had an issue with that being blocked by the GFW.

Did not have much luck with Nord in China - very, very difficult to get a connection and sometimes it didn't work at all, either on computer or Android

Firstly, not all hotels are equal, some hotels have their own solutions, by routing their traffic through HKG for example. This is not something that they advertise, but is something that you can ask before checking in. Secondly, it is my understanding that the HK SIm thing referenced above is NOT currently working in China.

Roaming on a HK sim most certainly does work. Full access to Google and other blocked/censored services.

^ Didn't know of this until recently. Can confirm, friend told me of this workaround.

Yes Coolers, it always worked until the last 2 weeks or so, with all the issues in Hong Kong...............and then it doesn't work so well right now.

I've been to China three times this year so far and it's getting harder and harder. I have Private Internet Access and pretty much every endpoint (they have a lot) was blocked by China. I found one obscure one on a weird port in Romania (?) that worked but performance was bad if course. I think i'll set up pfSense or something at home and VPN back to just go out there. Since our corporate VPN isn't blocked it makes me think they are just blocking known VPN CIDR subnets rather than doing deep-packet inspection to look for tunnels or IPSEC.

The phone thing does indeed work. My AT&T phone gets everything and performance is reasonable. I can't tether with an international plan but that HK workaround sounds good.

How much data per month can you get in China with an HK plan and tethering?

It depends on the data package you choose in HK - and not all of the HK sim cards will work, it's best to check online for current options. In most cases you can top up for more data when you use up the original package, or just buy multiple SIM cards.

It all depends on your plan.
You can buy disposable 7, 14 or 30 days cards with different amount of China data in HK. There are places where you can get these at a big discount from face value, even more buying in quantities.
You need to qualify for an HK monthly plan if that is what you meant or want (residence status in HK with a verifiable HK address and an HK credit card or bank account for auto-payment). You need a plan with China data, not just HK data. China data is usually an add on to a basic plan.

My present plan has 20GB/month out of which 5GB can be used in China.
I carry with me two 7 days 1GB disposables in case I run out. These are from a different carrier than my main line.
I also have a Pokefi which can also give me HK access while in China.

When communication is mission-critical you need a spare for the spare.

I've been using an HK China Mobile SIM on a monthly plan for over a year now, 6GB at $218HKD per month with data roaming across China. I don't have an HK residence permit so getting the monthly plan was a little tricky. US passport was fine but they want a mailing address for HK and do verification. Before applying, I created a free account with tiptrans.com which gives you a mailing address. China Mobile HK accepted this but required validation by mailing a verification code to the address. Tiptrans does mail and package forwarding and I had the letter forwarded for something like $5USD. I think tiptrans might offer scanning service for cheaper. While pending verification, the SIM worked fine. I think it gave me 60 days for the verification.

Before that I used a China Mobile HK SIM card with China roaming with 2GB per 28 days. I don't remember the exact charge up fee for 2GB but it was definitely less that $100HKD. Check their website looks like some decent deals going on now -- 8GB for 365 days at $168HKD for China Roaming.

Also checkout China Unicom HK, sometimes they have better deals than China Mobile with similar plans. I see they have 6 GB / 30 days at $148HKD that's rechargeable.

You can order any of these SIM cards online and have them delivered before your trip.

Referral to more thorough thread on the subject
 

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chin...vpn-china.html

We'll close this Travel Technology thread and ask future parties interested, to visit an active"China" board discussion linked above. It has north of 175 responses on the broad subject.