VPNs frequently get banned in China. I bought two major VPN services (nordvpn and one other) and they did not work when I got there. Luckily I had a backup VPN I host on Linode. It would randomly stop working though...

Outline VPN works pretty well FWIW.

I am currently in China; Outline doesn't work at all reliably.

That might be to do with going to a Digital Ocean IP, but if you can use an innocent IP, anything works. So what benefit is Outline supposedly offering?

> I wonder: Are there any Western apps which Chinese citizens would lose social credit or are officially prohibited from using?

That's not how it works. The apps are not officially banned, they are just unavailable or don't work. If they're not on the China iOS store (separate than US) then you can't install them, and if you went abroad and managed to install them, they just can't connect to the IG or whatever servers once you're back in China. Same for Android.

This doesn't seem correct. It was just in the news that Meta had to remove one of their apps from the Chinese market at the request of the Chinese gov.

That's my point, they are not officially banned, but they're just "not available in the app store" (which is effectively banned, just not under that name).

But that overt request was unusual. Most apps are simply removed as part of Apple's "compliance with local regulations".

The regulation recently changed and now requires all apps in the App Store to have a permit from the Chinese authority or be removed.

Ah interesting; I didn’t know that had changed. It looks like the gov is more open about the banning now.

Yes, China officially banned Threads and WhatsApp just a few days ago. They had Apple remove them from the App Store.

If the only way someone can use your product is flying to another country to acquire it, it's a ban. Giving it other language is supportive of Chinese government efforts to soften the reality around their unfair practices.

VPNs are unreliable and frustrating to use. They were never really solution for anyone I knew while living in China, especially for 4K video

Ouch. When I was there last 20-some years ago, high-speed interest was just becoming a thing and internet cafes were everywhere. Getting access to the outside world then was also a pain.

For Westerners, could they get GFOC-excluded commercial PoP internet connections or wireless carriers?

Perhaps in the near future, China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy. With all of the advances in economic mobility and details of life outside the GFOC, there will be more asks.

> China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy.

So long as the CCP delivers on economic prosperity this won't happen; people will not risk it. Those who can't handle it, and have the means, emigrate or have a plan B (i.e., their kids at a US university who can continue their career abroad; many Chinese would come to the US just to have a baby to ensure their kid had US citizenship--the US has clamped down on that). This is why the CCP's survival depends on economics.

> So long as the CCP delivers on economic prosperity this won't happen; people will not risk it.

I think the era of hockey-stick growth and development China is more or less over now, growth will continue but slow to a drip, and will face 3 threats: rising economic inequality, drying up of external joint ventures, and male-female ratio demographics imbalance. It has BRI going for it but external investments can't address domestic structural socioeconomic concerns. Xi will be blamed first because he rode economics to the top of the mountain. I'm concerned that starting a war, a common political tactic for any government system, maybe used to distract from domestic economic woes.

China has made a lot of investments into Africa and Central Asian countries, more like IMF-style loans, which give it considerable political leverage. But as to whether this translates into substantial economic advantages for China in terms of cash inflows, not just outflows, I haven't seen much to that effect.

China's housing market is its biggest problem. Most people invested their savings in second/third/etc. apartments as the stock market was notoriously unreliable (and investing abroad was very difficult). That means that a tremendous amount of middle-to-upper-class wealth is tied up in property values, creating a tremendous bubble. But the gov cannot let the bubble pop (see Evergrande, others before), as Japan did in the 90s, as that is the one thing that (in my opinion) could actually bring the CCP down.

I've tried to research details about the size of BRI and find specific projects. It's surprisingly opaque if you're used to FHWA's public disclosure of funds and projects. You could trace most hihhway funding in, say West Virginia, by pulling a few documents. I couldn't find any details on any project. I could not even find a video stream of the last year's conference. Just a keynote translation a week later.

I am suspicious that BRI might be more hot air than substance. That or world journalism is oblivious to what is supposedly the largest international infrastructure program in the world. Or Google doesn't index it.

I was there from 2007-2016, and also in 2002, but that was a dorm experience at PKU. The internet VPNs were just horrible, but the tradeoff was all the pirated video content available on Chinese video websites, so I got used to it.

2003: I went to China with 1 suitcase and came back with 2. The new one was absolutely full to the brim with pirated DVDs and fairly good quality fake LV from the "free markets". Had to chip a Sony DVD player because half of them were random regions. Back then, checking the right boxes and declaring sensible amounts on US claims declaration forms reduced probability of searches.

Did torrents work?

I remember that era fondly as the golden era of unfettered torrenting.

It can be downloaded, but the upload is limited.