It is illegal, but they do not enforce it 99.999% of the time. I know many of my mainland Chinese friends regularly use VPN services to cheat on CS:GO.
No one is going to care.
there is a law the you need a special license to operate a VPN in china. It is more illegal to be the one providing the VPN without this license than the one using it. I think it is just a monetary fine if caught using a VPN without a license but serious prison time if caught providing VPN. They basically never enforce the law on users they just go after the providers and try to block the overseas vpns
it is legally illegal .
Everything is illegal. Get used to it. But most people still use it anyways
Can i use whatsapp or google map with vpn?
Get a good mobile data package and use your phone. My friend used Tmobile and he doesn’t need a vpn.
I went to china for june-july and used express vpn everywhere. Never failed once. Windscribe and proton doesn’t work.
Literally half the people in Shanghai use a VPN to browse YouTube and Instagram. I honestly haven’t met anyone not use one, and I’m not talking about foreigners here.
if you have your own country carrier like T-mobile, you will be no limitation.
Have you ever heard of them enforcing it?
Technically they were not illegal until recently. Punishment of using VPN before the recent new laws were made by local officers on intentional misinterpretation of an old law that predates the GFW, which says it is illegal to establish communication channels to global Internet without permission. But as it predates the GFW, there were no special software channels required to visit foreign webs, so it could only have meant physical cables.
Most western countries imprison the same number of people for this as china does…
And there’s also exception hotels too. For example, at the White Swan hotel in Guangzhou during the Canton Fair, I was surprised their internet was fully open. I suspect it was an exception due to the amount of foreign buyers staying there and doing business. I’ve also heard that more higher end hotels also have open internet (eg FS, Ritz Carlton)…
You need one when roaming because it uses Chinese networks. It’s happened to me a few times… Then I got a Chinese number, and they cancelled it a few months after I left and gave it to someone else. I wonder if they can access my Chinese app accounts like taobao etc
A state dept official told me that the worst story he heard was someone had a police interaction & they made him delete his VPN app. So it was a bit difficult for him to redownload it, but obviously not the end of the world
So the advice, as per always, is don’t talk to the police whenever possible
What VPN would you recommend?
Thanks
Except there are plenty of stories of people getting in trouble for it. So it’s the typical, “fine so long as you don’t make a target of yourself”.
Just create a VPS. It’s essentially free due to trial periods and you can pick your location and are not restricted by anti-VPN measures.
A friend of mine claims that the CCP don’t block all VPN’s all of the time is so that they can watch western porn.
There may be an element of truth in this as I remember, back circa 2010, that they blocked all western porn sites except one (major site). Haha!