depends on time and place. its true that now there is less dependence on foreign internet and you can now be fully decoupled from english internet with the number of domestic apps. most people only use a VPN now just to access email (e.g. gmail, university), if they even need to at all. and yeah, if youre in beijing during a congress, then VPNs will be slow. but its trivial to set up and use a VPN, even my 88 year old grandma has one.

I promise you Uyghur muslims don't all have VPNs installed on their phones. That alone will get you disappeared into a prison camp.

"Every Han Chinese of a certain background" is the more accurate reference.