[mikeash]

This sort of thing used to work, but doesn't anymore. The GFW is now smart enough to detect VPNs based only on the traffic they generate, not port numbers or other easily changed things. It's currently an arms race between VPN providers trying to mask their traffic and the firewall trying to uncover it, and the firewall is winning so far.

[pixl97]

Whelp, that's pretty much it for the internet. Won't be long before many more governments are licensing and using this technology. The question is how long before supposedly 'free' governments start.

[lisivka]

It's easy to fix by mirroring their behavior: drop incoming connections from China until they drop their firewall.

[rahimnathwani]

If you're in China, you might want to use Shadowsocks. The server is easy to set up on any VPS (no need for TUN/TAP), and there are clients for Android (Shadowsocks), iOS9+ (Potatso), linux and routers.

I've found plain OpenVPN over TCP or UDP stopped working a few years ago (even using remote-random to shuffle ports). PPTP mostly still works.

I haven't used other VPN protocols for a long while, and don't use commercial VPN providers, but occasionally hear from friends that they have temporarily issues (for hours or days, but not weeks).

[mikeash]

Thanks, I'll give that a shot next time. I think I tried PPTP when I was there last year without success, but I may be misremembering.