[apatheticonion]

I tried to setup a shadowsocks server to bypass the GFW about 2 weeks ago. Server was hosted on my local network in Australia (with public IP), client was connecting from China (using the server IP).

It was blocked immediately and the client could not connect. I had several unknown IPs try to connect prior to the attempted connection.

I was stunned at how water tight the GFW is, it's really unfortunate as I would love to work/travel through China but cannot due to needing an active internet connection.

[__sy__]

Yeah pdf of report says that blocking is instant as of 2021. Also completely agree with the need for an active connection to do work. A lot of the software/hacker devs I knew have left China all together in the last 3-4 years. Inability to look up stuff reliably (even on working VPN providers) was one of the reasons cited by a few.

[throw_19cn1k3]

A fellow Aussie currently in China, a Trojan [0] server has been working fine for the last week I've been here. I've got it hosted through a VPS (smaller provider) in LA. While it's a bit of a pain to setup, reliability has been pretty decent (with occasional? short breaks) and definitely useable - my laptop is connected 24/7 and I can access the unfiltered web, including video, just fine. V2ray also supposedly works quite well, but I haven't looked into it.

[0] https://github.com/trojan-gfw/trojan

[fundatus]

Last time I went to China (2018) you could simply get a China Unicom Hong Kong SIM card and then use that to roam in mainland China. With that you'd get the Hong Kong censorship level, which is much much less restrictive. No VPN or anything needed apart from the SIM card itself.

[hutzlibu]

"you'd get the Hong Kong censorship level, which is much much less restrictive."

Didn’t that changed since 2018?

[emaro]

I'm in China right know with a Mainland/Macao/HK eSIM. My Chinese friend has to use a VPN to access Instagram as did I when I was connected via WiFi in mainland China. Using the eSIM connection I could access Instagram and Youtube without any issues, likewise here in Hongkong (with WiFi).

I didn't investigate how large the difference is, but Hongkong traffic is still treated more liberal.

[monetus]

It was really sad seeing all the bookstores close.

[m-p-3]

I run https://snowflake.torproject.org/ in my browser as my way to help.

[Grimburger]

That's a massive shame because shadowsocks has been the only real reliable method for a long time.

I used it successfully when I was in mainland China while VPN's, even the ones boasting they could get through the GFW were all hit or miss.