Are you certain that's the only way for them to do so? I suspect that smart people could find effective technical means to undermine and circumvent the Great Firewall of China.
It’s not that hard to circumvent actually. Also in major tech companies in China, employees can just use company network to access websites blocked by the firewall. But if you provide that as a service to general public, it’d get shutdown when it get popular
I'm sure hey are actively working to solve that. Some details here are disturbing.