If you are a foreigner or a tourist then nobody gives a shit. If you are a local then you are fucked. And I mean royally fucked. If you sell a VPN to someone in China they you can expect to “disappear” for at least 5 years.
Just be careful china is cracking down on foreign “spys” anf are actively trying to catch foreigner’s doing something they can relate to as spying. They’ve already locked up a few foreigners. I would usw the VPN just dont tell ANYONE.
the punishment is whatever they decide. Just don’t break the law there.
You are safe if you are a foreigner (non Chinese citizen)
You hold a FOREIGN PASSPORT, then just fuck that law.
All VPN use or cross border private traffic is illegal unless it is a registered service for business use offered by a carrier such as China Telecom that has the authority to supply such a service. Unless it’s a VPN provided by your Chinese employer it’s most likely illegal.
Even my Chinese friends have vpns. They’re fine as long as they didn’t launch political criticisms.
VPNs in China are treated like drugs in many Western countries. Using a VPN is fairly common in China and the cops aren’t going to after every VPN user. They typically will only go after those that sell/distribute VPNs or those that did malicious things towards China whilst using it (like driving a car under drug influence and getting into an accident). If you use a VPN to organise protests in China, they can legally lock you up for using a VPN in your court case.
Most commercial VPN doesnt work in China now. China most likely blocked their nodes alr. All i can use it my cmopany VPN or some not so well known VPN provider
If ur a foreigner, then don’t worry. You are the first class citizens on our soil, and native Chinese are just three or fourth class, so laws for them are not eligible for you
VPN is useless now, use shadowsocks or v2ray
Officially, it’s illegal.
But as long as you don’t do anything that Xi doesn’t like, the government doesn’t care.
Just follow all orders no matter how much you hate them, you should be fine.
Never heard people around me get punished because of use a VPN, but there are few on the news, most of them get a warning (like told them not to use it). It’s totally depends on what you do，there are many famous Chinese influencer posting video on youtube, some of them even treat as positive on CCTV(李子柒), but abuse Xi on Twitter will be another story.
The punishment is none, Chinese government has no right and power to punish other countries’ citizens
if you are chinese, the possibility is less than 0.1%
for you it’s just 0
but i would suggest you use other proxy service instead of vpn, because it’s very easy to be distinguished by gfw, and than your vpn cannot connect to internet outside china
I got sentenced to 6 years hard labor for using astrill vpn. Luckily they didn’t find expressvpn or it would have been 12
As a foreigner, never bring your personal/actual device to China, always use a burner. If you must, even for a layover, do NOT power up your device, it will get siphoned. Comments about foreigners not being prosecuted for VPNs are nonsense, you will pay huge fines, or worse.
Sauce: Worked in IT as an exec for Huawei.
Not illegal,in fact,there’s no official regulation that VPN is not allowed.But authorities are truely craking down those who make VPNs,rather than those who use VPN.
Does anyone know for foreigner will China custom ever search my phone? Do I need to unlock my phone for their inspection?
I used vpn for 2months and nobody gave a shit. The only problem was that the vpn didn’t work properly. I used two and both were constantly cutting the connection.