I showed a google map to a police officer (border control on the highway) to show where I was going, no problem. Had setup a few VPN on my iphone before going to have options in case one or two got flagged. My uni VPN worked during my entire stay.

https://maps.google.cn is actually working in mainland China, which I found surprisingly last month.

good to know! Now I understand better why they had all the transit info for beijing loaded into google map ;)

> Last year China took down Yahoo! too, despite Yahoo's relationship with Alibaba.

I mean, by last year that relationship stopped existing (as Yahoo!'s Ali shares would be with Altaba).

I've seen business travelers carrying two smartphones: one for the Chinese Internet, and the other one for going around the firewall.

How do they go around it with the second?

Edit: ardy42 answered this below. Foreign phones from home country provider seem to be exempt.

My AT&T iPhone wasn’t blocked when roaming in China, it seems they make exceptions for foreign phones. They’re censors are very clever at knowing where the limits are.

Coz your roaming data are literally in an AT&T VPN all the way back to America.

is it possible to use a VPN in the PR of China?

I don't know, but if you bring in a foreign phone to China with international data roaming, you can still access the uncensored internet with it. The data appears to be routed separately over the phone network, and it appears to exit from your carrier in your home country.

I've heard this is a temporary thing to make it easier for visitors, and it will stop working if you stay too long.

> I've heard this is a temporary thing to make it easier for visitors, and it will stop working if you stay too long.

It is, but my understanding is that's because roaming is expensive for your home carrier, so they'll cancel your account due to unprofitability if you spend too much time roaming with it.

See the fine print in this T-Mobile document:

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-3226

> Not for extended international use; you must reside in the U.S. and primary usage must occur on our U.S. network. Device must register on our U.S. network before international use.

> ...

> Network Management: Service may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted for misuse, abnormal use, interference with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users, or significant roaming.

They've got firewall (from US company Palo Alto Networks, btw), to block GTP traffic over GRX (which is used for roamers) based on their rules.

And unrestricted access is already unavailable in Tibet and Xinjiang.

I’d also love to have more details on this. I currently use Google Fi on my phone and laptop when in China, that’s the only way I’m able to be productive. If there are limitations on this or it’s a short term solution, that will affect my future plans in China. So any links or more details would be appreciated!

Do you have a cite for that? I'd like to read more.

Myself and all my friends paid for ExpressVPN. Much easier to get working if you have it installed before you go there, but not impossible

There's several well-known ones that work, and additional projects like Streisand[1] which exist to allow a roll-your-own solution. In all cases, VPNs that work are ones that obfuscate that they're VPNs via varying methods.

Otherwise, as others have said, mobile roaming data is functionally identical in that the data appears to the internet as having come from your home country. Hong Kong offer a few plans that are (relatively) affordable and roam into the mainland.

[1]: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

It's tricky. But doable. I know because I have done it on all three of my trips there.

I've been there for a while (2 years straight and more than 6 years since my first trip), I used many different VPNs providers and even setup my own servers.

Although the company is a bit shady and I'm pretty sure they have some connection with the party, Astrill is the best to use in terms of performance, bandwidth and ease of use. They recently added WireGuard support which is blazing fast.

However, if your priority is privacy, probably you should use your own server, or just stay out of China.

I'm curious what challenges you faced. I went once (a little over 3 years ago) and used a vpn fairly frequently (on and off as needed.) I think I even found and signed up for one while completely behind the great firewall.

Now, of course, I'd recommend setting it all up before going, but I've heard that it's still relatively commonplace for Westerners and PRC mostly turns a blind eye.

Every 2nd English language page, visited from China, will be full of ads for expressVPN.

Also what about ssh?

They can definitely detect it: http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...

It works quite well, but you need a host that isn’t blocked, and they tend to block AWS IPs, so you have to change the IP every now and then. For browsing SwitchyOmega works well with ssh.

Virtually anyone in China, even the Chinese people, just use a VPN or SSH, or both, and your internet is ok.

Are you sure about the SSH part?

I have few VPS's outside of China, and when I trying to SSH them directly from China, the connection would only alive for few minutes before gone slow (20 seconds delay), and eventually went dark (All packet dropped).

So I wrote my own proxy. It supports port mapping so I can map my local:2211 to server:21. When I connect to local:2211, the proxy will first connect to proxy-server (located outside of China) to establish an encrypted data stream, and then the proxy-server connects server:21.

This way I can keep the SSH connection alive as long as I wish to.

If you are using tools like Shadowsocks, you can use `ssh -o ProxyCommand ...` to ask ssh to go through Shadowsocks (Socks5 proxy).

when I was in China, I was a happy user(not affiliated with them, by any means) of a certain "myssh.me" (www) and it costed 20 Kuai (maybe 3 USD) a month and was pretty fast, faster then any other VPN available at the time.

But I just looked and this version of "them" was already taken down( this version was already SocialHarmonized, to use the chinese slang (colloqial term) )

Don't have time to find their new adress right now, but is like some torrent sites, change adress all the time, but the name is similar. Don accept imitations,...

It should have a chat tool in the website, you send a message and they answer right away(sometimes half-day, when they are lazy) and they will arrange payment by Alipay or WechatPay, and give your passcode.

The website should be well made and written in good english, and I think their logo was a horse, so if is not like this, is not the real myssh and is some fake imitator.

But with the crackdowns happening on VPN there still needs to be legitimate options. In my case I was an English teacher, and often we'd need to find resources from the internet for supplementary teaching materials. Can't have VPN on the school computers

Well, then you already want too much, right? VPN will give access to the Kids in the school to Porn and who knows what. So....

China is still a dictatorship, right, It is not the Disneyland. But Even in England you cannot install a VPN at a school's computer......

This is mostly true. However, there are also signs of change as they are starting to enforce the digital border. https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/2180960/chinese-vpn...

Good datapoint. I opened it and I see that is probably some Hong Kong newspaper. I like Hongkonese people very much, one of my favorite people in the world, really.

They are unique and so nice, if you know how to be friendly, of course. So...

I started reading with attention, and her picture was actually pretty, ( for my taste, no cure for yellow fever)...

...But when She starts to call "Beijing" (!!!!!)...(sigh)...

The little cop of some whoever place in GuangDong, I just stop reading right there, Not to waste my brain with the unlogic logic that was possibly coming...

But, is an important datapoint. The Long winter is Coming, this summer has already lasted 8 years or so. But just 1 in a billion, but one by one you make a billion.

But i read more and things like this, quote from her:

"Many companies complained that their paid-for VPN services were not functioning for up to a week."

Sounds weird. Is easy to make a point to any theory in China, because there is a lot of people there, you can get a lot of datapoints and anecdotes to make any point, right.

If I want to make a pretty headline about the humanity hugest police crackdown on ICE(that drug the vietnamese girls like, and I have to say it is nice, maybe is Meth, I don't know , probably Australia is called Ice, In China is Called LIUBIN, and is the Drug Number 1 in China, The Drug of The People, so ........

I can write a book about that crackdown, right.......

How many social points do they strike when they find you use a VPN?

I really like your comment, I think is the best comment I have ever read in Hackernews, I mean, I say for the sake of Fun, not for work or science or knowledge,...

...But for Entertainment, for the pure Fun itself, This was the best comment I ever read, And this proves that Hackernews is still not going the way of the Dodo[1] (in this case, the way of Slashdot)...

And proves that, sofar, alecco is the smartest (or at least the funniest in a smart way ) guy in Hackernews.

There is a reason Professor Moriarty's bits always converge, and the reason was the Pure Fun, off course.

I almost forgot to answer the question:

The Chinese Cops use VPN's to watch Japanese Porn together with their wives and girlfriends, if they are not married yet, , because the Cops are not machines, so...

I think they will let this one pass unpunished...

Unless you are using a VPN to scorch the chinese President in public like I do: Xi Jin Pin is a Incompetent War Monger !!! I Want HuJinDao Back !!!!!!!

So, in this case, if they catch me using my VPN to do what I am doing here, so I will loose a lot of social points, my friend, and I will... BEI HEXIE LE ( Get Harmonized ).

Probably 1 full year in Jail, if they catch me saying what I am saying using a VPN.

So I am a Brave guy , Right?

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

very strange comment

Thanks for pointing.

I went to read my comment above with Maximum Attention, too see why is strange, or If there is something strange on the my comment. So...

Yes, there is something strange, thanks for pointing, dboon.

Sounded like I want a Competent War Monger as my ruler.

No, just to clarify, I want a Competent Not War Monger.

Thanks.