[strayamaaate]

There is no GFW in Hong Kong, so you enjoy unfettered Internet access.

For traffic inbound to China from HK, traditionally it's been slightly faster but that may just be proximity rather than any preferential treatment by the GFW.

[rsync]

Can confirm. We have datacenter space in Hong Kong with a fiber connection to he.net and it is indistinguishable from all of our other sites, globally.

End user Internet usage in Hong Kong is also indistinguishable from California. Although, to be fair, I stay at (relatively) expensive, western hotels and my Internet experience inside of mainland China is also indistinguishable from California.