[midasz]

How is "have no choice" false when you have to pretend to be from another country to be able to use messaging services? If the choice is bordering on illegal (I'm not familiar with the intricacies of Chinese law but I'd assume it's atleast frowned upon to bypass their barriers) then is it really a choice? To me a choice would be that you could use the state sanctioned communication apps OR another one in the same way.

[OwlsParlay]

My understanding is that VPNs are not hard to get and are silently tolerated. Obviously, using them to then do something illegal like plan your own protests might get you in trouble, but using it to access YouTube or chat to someone overseas via WhatsApp is allowed.

[lazyasciiart]

They were tolerated at first but not as much any more. https://www.pcmag.com/news/china-starts-issuing-145-fines-fo...

[cocoggu]

It's not as obvious as before, and they try to show their big arms to discourage most of the people, but there is always a way. I live in China since almost 8 years and I've seen so many articles with big titles like "VPN are going to be totally blocked next month". Every time I'm scared, but every time not a lot change (hopefully, otherwise I would just leave).

On big CCP reunions (next one at the end of may), they somehow block most of the VPN for several days, so they have the capacity to do it. But it never last so long, I feel they use it a bit like a pressure cooker, to release pressure when people are getting upset.