[helen___keller]

When I was in China in 2019, the VPN built into google fi actually got me around the GFW with zero effort. I didn’t even realize it until I caught myself checking American social media unhindered.

My experience is most younger and tech savvy people have a VPN. It’s common / casual, like speeding your car by 10mph on the highway.

Most people are not persecuted for using a VPN, I assume that’s reserved for people who the government already wanted to persecute and just need to give an excuse for why they detained their target.

[ehhthing]

Assuming what you mean is over mobile data (and not over wifi), mobile data works differently than typical internet. You can think of it like when you connect to a mobile network what you're actually doing is making an IPsec connection to your carrier, with all data flowing over that IPsec connection. As such any carrier with a roaming agreement in China will bypass the GFW entirely -- and this is by design, Chinese carriers have to whitelist the APNs of western companies they do business with.

[pantalaimon]

I think China doesn’t care if foreigners use a VPN, it’s their own people they want to keep under control.

[balder1991]

I keep contact with a girl in China and from her reports using VPNs is kinda common for young people with college education. She would do it sometimes to access YouTube, and would laugh it off when I would say she should be careful doing such things.

I suppose for the government, as long as it isn’t the majority of people doing something that would cause trouble, it isn’t worth tracking down all things, as expected.

[mrguyorama]

This is intentional; "Oh it's not authoritarian/bad, people use VPNs all the time and get away with it".

Except for that muslim chick another commenter pointed out, or anyone else the party decides is undesirable.

[mannerheim]

Just be prepared to spend a year or two in prison if relations between your country and China worsen and they need a hostage.

[mushbino]

Like the executive from Huawei who was imprisoned in Canada

[LorenPechtel]

s/Huawei/Chinese State Security/

She was a spy--look at how intense their reaction was.

Unfortunately, they tend to grab innocents to exchange for captured spies. However, they're going to go for big fish, not little ones. As an average joe I'm not concerned about being held for a spy swap, but if I were a highly placed executive there's no way I would set foot in China.

[dirtyid]

Meng was PRC royalty - the daughter of Huawei's president, imagine a literal billionaire being a spy. She was taken hostage under Pence's China Initative for Iranian sanctions shenanigans that historically was dealt via fines. The initiative explicitly called for targetting PRC nationals.

Hence intense reaction. The 2 Canadian Michaels on the other hand, were text book spys with NGO covers. Western propaganda likes insinuate PRC would capture innocent westerners when state security have massive state survillance capability that completely dismantled CIA networks a few years prior. Like literally friend of Michael hinted he was in "intelligence" and CSIS (Canadian CIA) publically celebrated on twitter upon their return. The Michaels weren't executives. The TLDR, while in PRC, don't traffic drugs, don't be a spy/do anti state activities, don't get involved in expensive legal proceedings - the latter is what actually get (white) westerners in trouble via exit bans.

[mannerheim]

It's time for the West to stop playing around and allowing this sort of hostage taking. If China and Russia want to play dirty, play dirty back. They take a hostage, start taking their nationals hostage and plant large quantities of fentanyl on them.

[mushbino]

Do you have any proof she was a spy? She absolutely was not. An extremely high ranking executive of one of the largest technology companies on earth would be literally the worst possible choice for a spy.

[synergy20]

That's because the GFW allowed it, GFW has no problems to block any VPN at will.

GFW is sophisticated beyond imagination, one way to detect VPN traffic(or SSL, or SSH) is to observe its patterns and where the traffic is going. It's not too hard to have a blacklist of all VPN vendors too.

shadowsocks was designed to bypass it(to make traffic looking random), I recall its developers were visited by cops and warned to stop doing that.

It's said China built the largest LAN on earth, the government is just too scared by its people to get educated, it's a true parallel universe.

[chanind]

The reverse is true as well. I traveled in India with a friend from China who used their Chinese sim card in India, and their data was censored through the firewall. Really annoying to be outside China and not able to use Google maps.

[porridgeraisin]

Mostly that's india blocking Chinese comms.

[mushbino]

Could that just be India blocking Chinese sims?

[computerfriend]

That's roaming, not a VPN.

[ktta]

Google Fi offers a VPN as well: https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9040000?hl=en

[qingcharles]

This is the same in Qatar, and probably in other Middle-East countries. Most of the residents use a VPN to get around the firewall, but I don't think anyone would be prosecuted for it unless the police wanted a nice easy reason to get you into custody.