In China, you may need to use one (Or multiple) of following:

https://github.com/shadowsocks https://github.com/v2ray https://github.com/XX-net https://github.com/ginuerzh/gost

And +https://github.com/gfwlist/gfwlist for automatic proxy switch.

Those applications may require a dedicated server or VPS to run. Once you set it up, it will act like a relay between you and the host you want to access (So that server or VPS must located outside GFW's shadow. And you better set it up and get it well tested before you move to China).

If you don't want to setup a server all by yourself, you can use Lantern or Psiphon, but they are considered not safe as you don't have any control once data leaves your machine.

I personally use Shadowsocks + my own one made with Golang. Both of them works very good for me. Some people may had problem with Shadowsocks but cause of those problems remain a myth.

When I was in China last April, SSTP worked fine (though long-lived connections tend to become slower over time, and then need a few minutes of cool down before being usable again). Most Chinese people I met were using shadowsocks.

But in a vlog I've watched on Youtube, the host of that vlog said "Over the last coupe of days, ALL the VPN is been very difficult to use". So, I guess that includes ExpressVPN.

Here is the video if you interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuEdYvQmVFg (5:20)

Coupled with the official cable TV service, which is amusingly abbreviated CCTV[1], and other state-controlled media, it's an eye-opening thing to see (more blatant) information control in action.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television

Can you read Chinese? I ask because if not, the experience of people who can might be very different.

I'm completely against the censorship; I just wonder how effectively they implement it.

As someone who owns and works and knows the ins and outs of an ISP and had the 'pleasure' to deal with many 3-word government organization, I can't help but feel that many people think privacy exist in some form and using VPN somehow makes you immune.

Please learn to understand double-speak. If the FBI says they are having a hard time cracking smart-phones or some kind of encryption, understand that they actually want you to use that security because they have figured out how to get around it.

I may sound like an alarmist, but it isn't intentional - because the government is much much more powerful in terms of resources they can throw at a problem - if they can't crack something they will find a way to intimidate someone to install a backdoor for them while completely denying it in public. This happens ALL the time. Most of us just don't know about it.

http://www.slashgeek.net/2017/10/23/online-privacy-doesnt-ex...

Do you have any evidence, or is this just speculation? I can buy that governments have access to zero-day exploits; I don't buy that every form of encryption they complain about has been secretly been broken.

Was slow, but it worked.

Do you recommend that I set up strongSwan?

Whether you can find one with reasonable data rates in China is probably the main question.

Two that I have used with great success are Kyivstar from Ukraine and China Unicom HK (note it must be HK, not mainland China). Others may be listed at [0].

[0] http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/

My T-Mobile had free international roaming baked in at 2G speeds. Unlike the US however, most foreign carriers in developed Asian nations (China/Korea) don't support 2G fallback, so I had free 3G everywhere.

It was pretty much like using the American internet.

If it is only for yourself and traffic is very little, it may survive the period of your stay in China. Nobody I know in mainland runs OpenVPN any more so I cannot really prove that, sigh...

That's why Tor had to implement HTTPS-like fake traffic padding in its obfsproxy modules, which also need to keep evolving...

1. DNS resolution may not work, so you'll need to find a way to resolve the domain name (i.e. hk.privateinternetaccess.com) to IPs for your config.

2. Even if you get an IP it may not work all the time. You will have to keep resolving the domain name for another IP (or maybe just look at all the DNS records?).

EDIT: I should mention I used PIA's PPTP (yes, it's discouraged but it worked for my purposes) and L2TP configurations just fine.

In hotel, the Wi-Fi network cannot connect to many sites. Sometimes, I can connect the Internet via OpenVPN, but, Shadowsocks is more stable.

Furthermore, if ExpressVPN is allowed, could you connect to that and inner-tunnel to your own VPN?