China - VPN Experience

VPN
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Well, there are a lot of reports by folks but here is my modest report on the usage of VPNs in China. I arrived in China, Beijing Airport and then went to Tianjin. So, if locality is important, this is for that northern region. Let’s keep it brief and short.

NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN all do not work at all.

Mullvad VPN works okay. Ping 281ms, Download 4,87 Mbps, Upload 45,5 Mbps. Connects reliably. Good price. Advantage: up to 5 devices. Connects to servers primarily in Sweden, then UK, US, etc.

LetsVPN: works great, connects instantly, stable. Prices pretty good. It is honestly a bit scary how well it works. Ping 48ms, Download 38,9 Mbps, Upload 43,5 Mbps. Connects to servers in Beijing. Hmm. Disadvantage: Only 2 devices.

Side note: Using VPNs on my secondary phone with all China-Apps. Also Macbook and iPad. Initially planned to also use VPNs on my primary phone, however, the Esim I got from TSimTech (China Premium, on the App MobiMatter - great prices, easy to handle) makes it unnecessary. Re-routes traffic via Hong Kong. Everything works as in Europe/US. Fast speed. No problems whatsoever. Disadvantage: only on one phone, no phone number for calls or messages.

In the end, a combination of options would probably be best, if you can afford it financially. Anyway, hope this helps someone who plans to go to China soon.

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Thanks OP! I’ll go soon and it sure helped me.

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I’m also in tianjin and lets vpn has been my daily driver. Reliable, but cant put onto my router which I’d like to do eventually. Also without a VPN, I get 1000 mbps download speed straight from the Chinese wifi, but as soon as I kick on let’s VPN, I get 50mbs max. Seems like a crazy dip in performance, percentage wise. Any way to improve this?

I also have mullvad but have not been able to find a decent server to connect to. I get like .3 Mbps, basically unusable. Which servers do you use?

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The fact is that if you want something that works reliably all the time, you’re going to have to stay on top of cutting-edge protocols and learn more than a little bit about networking (like the internet, not social).

Services like Lets work because the government is basically in on it. This also means they can turn it off at will. Astrill is using years-old protocols that are now easily detected and can be similarly shut down at will. They seem content to rake in money and do little to improve. Mullvad uses basically ancient tech (openvpn and wiregaurd, both a decade old) which was cracked by countries like China and Iran a long time ago.

XRay-REALITY is relatively new tech that the censorship hasn’t quite caught up with. Trouble is that no commerical providers are running it.

There are loads of very clever people in an arms race with censors, especially in China and Russia. The guy who invented socks5 almost 10 years ago was a Chinese guy who was later arrested, for example.

If you are comfortable with setting up servers and doing a bit of configuration then you can get something that works all the time every time, but most people understandably don’t want to go to that trouble. Otherwise, you just have to deal with intermittent reliability.

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Nice to know, thx for sharing ur experience which is very helpful before moving to china, may i ask does surfshark works as well ? About letsvpn does streaming (geoblocking) works ?

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Astrill vpn works good

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WannaFlix is great for browsing and streaming.

Lonlife is a gaming VPN if you want to play with friends in Europe or the Americas.

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I am currently in Beijing visiting and using PIA without issue except it would not work on The Regent Beijing Hotel WiFi which I use ShadowRocket. Also if anyone wonder, I use Nomad eSIM for my iPad and Holafly eSIM for WiFi calling on Visible. Both works just okay. However require constant toggling on/off of Cellular and data roaming to get it to work. Holafly eSIM for WiFi calling when on the road going from one cell tower to the next often times must toggle Cellular on/off or restart iPhone to get it to work. Very frustrating.

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I didn’t really know what to expect from vpn’s so I bought something that’s quite cheap. PrivateVPN works, but is very slow. I bought it for about €70 for 3 years. My hotel wifi gives me 26.8Mbps with 240ms but with vpn I only get 0.8-2.4Mbps with 192ms through the Hong Kong server. So I wouldn’t really recommend it for that reason unless you need something cheap.

Just downloaded Lets, I’m not really convinced it’s not controlled by the government and just trying to lure us in, but there is no denying it’s extremely quick. Tested speeds again on the same network and it’s 59.3Mbps with 30ms

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Go buy shadow rocket, it works very well

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Thank you for the post OP. I will keep this in mind for the future.

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I am now a loyal LetsVPN user . I used Astrill for many years but my colleague convinced me to give Lets a try and it is reliable on both my Mac and IPhone . Astrill was not that reliable in my phone. I usually have two VPNs so I still have Astrill but it is a back up . In terms of cost , they are both cheap relative to what I spend on other essentials . I would pay substantially more for a VPN for reliable service . Without a VPN in China the internet is absolutely useless

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I visited Changchun for a month recently. I used Astrill and it was fine. Had a moment or two where I needed to switch servers/modes but it always worked when I did.

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For tourists it should be OK, but for someone who currently live in China, I will not use a VPN whose server is in Beijing, if so, it’s under government monitoring for sure. What’s worse is if your info gets sold to hackers then that could be a lot of trouble. You should know that personal info leaking is a common thing in China. I am not worrying about the political risk since I am not someone influential at all.

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I tried several VPN’s for the first several I was here, but it was always unstable. Random connection problems on national holidays and sensitive events due to extra government pressure. It was a pain. Finally I setup my own private network that’s only for myself. The cost is lower than most monthly plans for other services and connections are always stable and fast.

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personalvpn.com connect to Japan all sites work

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This is accurate, Google and chat gpt both said Nord would work, but it absolutely does not. Shadowrocket works well for me

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ProtonVPN free version got me through my first few weeks here quite well. It’s a shame that it no longer connects.

I use hide.me and it works fine.

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I definitely used LetsVPN & so did some of the students from China which made me smile. But I’ve only connected it to my phone. I was in Beijing, Baoding & Chengdu!

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I’m curious, did you have any trouble using Chinese apps with your eSIM? Especially Alipay and Wechat? As I’m looking to get one for my upcoming trip.