Best VPN for China in 2020

As with all our VPN research, we apply a fair and unbiased methodology to find the best VPN in China. The process is neutral and we put every VPN though the same process.

We don’t rely solely on word of mouth for our China VPN recommendations. We maintain a VPN testing infrastructure specifically for monitoring the performance of popular VPNs in China from a server near to Shanghai. We routinely test VPNs on this server, to see if the VPN can actually break through the censorship.

Testing VPNs in China is not a straightforward process, and our readers are another key resource. If you have feedback on how our recommendations, as well as other VPNs, are currently working in China, leave us a comment below.

This testing apparatus allows us to use VPNs as though we are on the ground in China, and track the performance of data over time. We are currently building a larger dataset, allowing us to offer unique insight into what VPNs do and don’t work in China.

When we test a VPN for China we look for:

• Ability to bypass the Great Firewall from our Shanghai server
• Strong encryption without IP or DNS leaks
• Effective obfuscation technology
• Good speeds from China
• Servers in nearby countries or specialised servers
• China-specific support (such as additional download links)
• Not run by the Chinese government or companies

Since China started cracking-down on VPN services, the majority of VPN apps don’t work in China.

Even some of the most popular VPN services don’t come with the tools necessary for beating the Great Chinese Firewall’s censors.

Here are some popular VPN services that don’t work well in China:

• CyberGhost
• HideMyAss
• Hotspot Shield
• IPVanish
• Private Internet Access
• TunnelBear

Basically, if a VPN doesn’t come with obfuscation tools or stealth protocols, it’s unlikely to get past the Chinese VPN blocks.

The ‘Great Firewall of China’ (or GFW) is the nickname given to China’s internet censorship system, which functions through legislation and filtering technologies.

Since 2003, it has given Chinese authorities the power to monitor and restrict internet access to anyone based in mainland China (Hong Kong and Macau are exempt).

The Great Firewall uses a combination of five methods to block websites and apps:

1. IP blocking – blocking IP addresses that resolve to specific URLs (websites).
2. DNS cache poisoning, or DNS spoofing – to divert traffic from one website to another, which practically blocks you from accessing your desired website or app.
3. Keyword and URL filtering – scanning websites and URLs for specific terms.
4. Deep packet inspection (DPI) – the inspection of headers in data packets to detect the destination IP address (website).
5. Manual actions – Chinese authorities employ thousands of workers to censor forbidden content.

How Does the Great Firewall Work?

Unlike the online censorship of some other countries, China’s Great Firewall has been around since the origins of the internet, and as such is built into the basic internet infrastructure of the country.

It doesn’t operate in a single or straightforward way, and the CCP (China’s ruling political party) maintains a high degree of secrecy about how its censorship functions, but from the outside looking in we can observe some common methods used by the Great Firewall:

1. IP Blocking

   China builds a blacklist of IP addresses which correspond to banned websites. If it sees you are trying to connect to these IPs, your traffic will simply be blocked. If IP addresses associated with a non-state approved VPN are discovered, they are blocked too.

2. DNS Poisoning

   When you connect to a website something called DNS is used to establish a connection between your computer or phone and the website’s IP address. China can set DNS servers up to give faulty information for some DNS requests, which will prevent you from establishing a connection with the website.

3. URL Filtering

   As well as blocking specific IPs, China scans URLs for sensitive keywords. This means you might be able to access part of a website, but not pages which refer to content China would rather keep you from seeing.

4. Deep Packet Inspection & Injection

   In certain cases, the Firewall will look through blocks of unencrypted data to look for flagged keywords using a process known as ‘deep packet inspection’. It can stop any unwanted packets from being transmitted. After identifying an unwanted connection, China can inject reset packets, to break the connection between you and the website you are visiting for a period of time.

5. Manual Actions

   Much of the censorship carried out as part of the Great Firewall isn’t automated. The government hires staff specifically to scan the internet for content to add to its blacklist.

By combining these technologies and constantly upgrading its methods and infrastructure, China has managed to build the most effective and dynamic system of online censorship in the world.

Even with obfuscation technology in place many VPNs simply are not up to the task of overcoming it.

Does the Great Firewall Block Every VPN?

China actively blocks VPN connections, but currently it cannot block every VPN. China has been blocking VPNs to some degree since 2011 but in late 2017 to early 2018 the Chinese government’s VPN clampdowns intensified.

During that time, the Chinese government ordered the Apple App Store to remove all VPN apps and threatened to block all VPN services that were not government-approved.

While China wasn’t successful in blocking all VPN services, many are now unusable.

Even the best VPNs with the most effective obfuscation tools fall victim to the Great Firewall’s crackdowns from time to time.

During times of political unrest, or on significant anniversaries such as June 4 (1989 Tiananmen Square protests), the Chinese government tends to crack down on VPNs more intensely. While you may find it harder to connect to a VPN server, the best VPN services usually find a solution reasonably quickly.

How Do VPNs Beat the Great Firewall?

Some VPNs evade the Great Firewall of China using encryption and obfuscation tools.

VPNs encrypt internet traffic so that the Great Firewall can’t see what you’re trying to access online.

The encrypted traffic is routed to your VPN service’s private servers before going to the website or service that you want to access, hiding the destination of the internet traffic from the Great Firewall too.

However, the Chinese censors have learnt to identify some VPN connections.

Using Deep Packet Inspection, the censors can see certain indicators of VPN traffic, such as characteristics of particular VPN protocols.

The best VPNs for China now employ obfuscation tools which scramble VPN data to look like normal HTTPS internet traffic, helping the data to go undetected.

Even with obfuscation, the Great Firewall still successfully blocks some VPN servers by blacklisting their associated IP address ranges.

This means that one day a server might work but the next it wont. Some trial and error might be required when this happens.

What Is VPN Obfuscation?

VPN obfuscation disguises VPN traffic to make it blend in with other forms of online traffic. Think of it like camouflage; normal VPN encryption stops observers from reading your traffic, but obfuscation stops them from knowing it is even there.

Without obfuscation, the Chinese Firewall will detect VPN traffic (through deep packet inspection) and block it.

Therefore, VPN providers use protocol obfuscation methods to scramble VPN data and mask it as regular HTTPS web traffic.

The two most used ways to obfuscate VPN traffic involve using:

1. XOR – Also referred to as OpenVPN Scramble, XOR is an encryption algorithm often used to mask OpenVPN traffic.
2. Obfsproxy – Developed by the Tor network, Obfsproxy works by adding a further layer of encryption to OpenVPN traffic using the obfs4 wrapper.

Sometimes obfuscation protocols are also called ‘stealth’ or ‘camouflage’ protocols. All of our recommended VPNs above use obfuscation protocols.

Which Websites Does the Great Firewall Block?

Many of the most popular websites and apps in the world are blocked in China, including:

• Google (Gmail, Google Maps & all other Google services – blocked since 2014)
• YouTube (blocked since 2011)
• Facebook (blocked since 2009)
• Twitter (blocked since 2009)
• Instagram (blocked since 2014)
• WhatsApp (blocked since 2017)
• Skype (blocked since 2017)
• Pinterest (blocked since 2017)

The Google Play Store isn’t available at all in China, and Apple’s App Store complies with Chinese laws, so it’s highly restricted, meaning that you can’t find VPN apps on there.

You can use the greatfire.org analyzer tool to check if specific websites are blocked.

Many VPN websites are blocked in China, which is why it’s super important to set up your VPN apps before you travel.

You can download APK files directly from some VPN websites – although they too may be blocked – for your Android device.

Be wary of downloading those types of files from third-party websites, though, as they can be infected with malware.

Here is a more comprehensive list of websites blocked in mainland China. You can also use this checker to find out if a website is available or not. Censorship varies from day to day and region to region.

During times of political unrest censorship can be heightened, and some areas of China can be affected more than others.

Does the Great Firewall Block Mobile Apps?

The great firewall can block access to anything which requires access to the internet. This includes email (if you use Gmail) and blacklisted mobile apps.

If your mobile app needs to connect to a blocked site or service to operate, it won’t work in China.

The app store itself is also much more limited in China. On iOS you can still access the Apple App Store, but it won’t contain all the apps you can find elsewhere. On Android there are several app stores available, including the Tencent, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Baidu stores.

For this reason it is important you download every app you need – particularly your VPN app – before arriving in China.

• What Is the Best Free VPN for China?
• Why Is My VPN Slow in China?
• Are VPNs Legal in China?
• Can I Beat the Great Firewall Without a VPN?
• Is Social Media Blocked in China?
• How Do I Get a Chinese IP Address?

What Is the Best Free VPN for China?

The best free VPN we’ve seen in China is Windscribe Free. In fact it’s the only free VPN we’ve been able to get working in China.

Generally, though, we don’t recommend using free VPNs in China. They are unlikely to work, and free VPNs come with risks.

Why Is My VPN Slow in China?

You’ll find that internet speeds are typically slower than you’d expect when connecting to sites outside of China due to the Great Firewall and local infrastructure.

VPNs generally slow down your internet speeds because of encryption and how traffic is relayed via the VPN server, but the best VPNs only impact speeds by about 5-10% if you connect to a server nearby.

The obfuscation tools necessary for VPNs to work in the country additionally impact speeds slightly, making them a little slower than regular VPN connections made outside of China.

Generally, you can ensure the best speeds by connecting to the closest possible VPN server such as Hong Kong or Singapore. Sometimes, though, slightly longer connections will give you better results. You may need to experiment to find the best server for you.

Are VPNs Legal in China?

VPNs are not illegal in China, but only government approved VPNs are allowed.

VPN services have to gain strict approval from the Chinese Communist Party before they can operate. They often have to agree to logging and sharing user data with local authorities, making using the VPN for privacy pointless.

Using a VPN “without authorization” can result in fines of up to 15,000 yuan (approximately $2,200). There is fairly little precedent of people actually being charged for it though, particularly foreigners.

If you choose a legitimate, trusted, and safe VPN for China – like ExpressVPN – it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get into trouble for using it.

Can I Beat the Great Firewall Without a VPN?

Besides VPNs, there are other circumvention tools that may be able to unblock websites and apps in China, but they’re often not as effective.

Essentially, most alternatives to VPNs don’t protect your privacy and aren’t guaranteed to work.

Here’s a list of five circumvention tools that may (or may not) beat the Great Firewall:

1. Proxies (Shadowsocks)

   One option is to use a proxy server, which spoofs your IP address but doesn’t encrypt internet traffic.
   
   This means that your ISP – or the Chinese government – will be able to see what you’re doing online.
   
   The most effective proxy for China is Shadowsocks, which uses the SOCKS5 internet protocol. Many VPNs actually incorporate Shadowsocks into their obfuscation protocols.

2. Lantern

   Lantern is open-source peer-to-peer (P2P) software specifically built to circumvent web filters, and funded by the US government.
   It relies on volunteer users, located in countries with more open internet access, to share their bandwidth with users in high censorship nations.
   
   Lantern is not an anonymity tool, so remember that your web activity is still visible to others.

3. Mirror Sites

   Some websites release mirrors of their websites that have been blocked by the Great Firewall so that those in China can still access their content.
   
   However, these mirror sites are usually blocked soon after too, making it a very unreliable option.

4. TOR

   The Onion Router (Tor), a free anonymous web browser, anonymizes your internet surfing by randomly routing your web traffic through a network of servers.
   
   While Tor is a safer option than using proxy servers or mirror websites, it comes with some major disadvantages.
   
   First: Tor is very slow – much slower than a good VPN.
   Second: Tor is very anonymous but it isn’t secure, so – much more than with a VPN – you need to know what you’re getting into before using Tor. You can weigh up the risks with our Tor vs. VPN comparison.
   
   Third: China actively blocks access to Tor, so to unblock websites you’ll have to tinker with Tor’s advanced settings and make use of bridges. There is a good chance that you just won’t be able to get it working, though.

5. FreeBrowser

   FreeBrowser is a free web browser for Android devices with built-in circumvention technology. It’s used by over 100,000 Android users, but user reviews are very mixed.
   
   Also, remember it’s a web browser so your internet traffic outside of it will be blocked (or heavily restricted) in China.

Is Social Media Blocked in China?

Many of the sites blocked in China are social media websites. This means you also won’t be able to access these services from mobile apps without a VPN.

Blocked social media sites include:

• WhatsApp
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Some social media sites aren’t blocked in China, though. You can access:

• LinkedIn
• Weibo
• Renren
• YouKu

While not a social media website, Github is also available in China and has been used as a platform for dissent and sending messages into the wider internet.

How Do I Get a Chinese IP Address?

If you want to use a VPN to connect into China, there are a few VPN providers with virtual server locations that will give you a Chinese IP address: PureVPN, Ivacy, HideMyAss, and Hotspot Shield.

These VPN servers are not physically located in China but do assign you a Chinese IP, which will make it seem as if you’re located in mainland China. These are known as Virtual Server Locations.

To change your IP to a Chinese one, simply select the ‘China’ server and click connect.

You can check that you have a Chinese IP address by running a leak test on browserleaks.com:

Screenshot of Hotspot Shield leak test on browserleaks.com connected to a China VPN server

By using a VPN to connect into China, you will be able to access popular Chinese streaming websites such as Youku, Tudou, and Sohu Video.