[mirimir]

Indeed. You can pick VPN providers who aren't vulnerable to your adversaries. In China, you maybe pick US providers. In the US, maybe you pick Chinese providers. And when you're chaining VPNs, you cross jurisdictions, to reduce the risk of coerced collaboration.

VPN chaining does start to look somewhat like Tor. But the bandwidth can be a lot greater. However, it's far less anonymous, because there's just a static circuit. Tor switches circuits frequently, at ten minute intervals by default.

Also, one can combine VPN services and Tor. By hitting Tor through VPNs, you hide Tor use from your ISP and its friends. And you hide your ISP-assigned IP from potentially evil entry guards. By routing VPNs through Tor, you hide Tor use from sites that you visit, and also hide your traffic from potentially evil exit nodes. One can even run VPN servers as Tor onion services.