Sorry, but this is an anecdote. Do you have a source that shows some usage? I'd love to see that, whichever side it agrees with, but personal experiences rarely generalises to nations.
Interestingly with censorship being such a sensitive topic in China, it's hard to find statistics on VPN usage rate. I will just say that I'm a Chinese citizen who visits China regularly every year. My impressions can't be too far off from the actual stats.