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.