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Comment by mm321 | Hacker News Reader

is it possible to use a VPN in the PR of China?

I don't know, but if you bring in a foreign phone to China with international data roaming, you can still access the uncensored internet with it. The data appears to be routed separately over the phone network, and it appears to exit from your carrier in your home country.

I've heard this is a temporary thing to make it easier for visitors, and it will stop working if you stay too long.

> I've heard this is a temporary thing to make it easier for visitors, and it will stop working if you stay too long.

It is, but my understanding is that's because roaming is expensive for your home carrier, so they'll cancel your account due to unprofitability if you spend too much time roaming with it.

See the fine print in this T-Mobile document:

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-3226

> Not for extended international use; you must reside in the U.S. and primary usage must occur on our U.S. network. Device must register on our U.S. network before international use.

> ...

> Network Management: Service may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted for misuse, abnormal use, interference with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users, or significant roaming.

They've got firewall (from US company Palo Alto Networks, btw), to block GTP traffic over GRX (which is used for roamers) based on their rules.

And unrestricted access is already unavailable in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Do you have a cite for that? I'd like to read more.

I’d also love to have more details on this. I currently use Google Fi on my phone and laptop when in China, that’s the only way I’m able to be productive. If there are limitations on this or it’s a short term solution, that will affect my future plans in China. So any links or more details would be appreciated!

Myself and all my friends paid for ExpressVPN. Much easier to get working if you have it installed before you go there, but not impossible

There's several well-known ones that work, and additional projects like Streisand[1] which exist to allow a roll-your-own solution. In all cases, VPNs that work are ones that obfuscate that they're VPNs via varying methods.

Otherwise, as others have said, mobile roaming data is functionally identical in that the data appears to the internet as having come from your home country. Hong Kong offer a few plans that are (relatively) affordable and roam into the mainland.

[1]: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

It's tricky. But doable. I know because I have done it on all three of my trips there.

Every 2nd English language page, visited from China, will be full of ads for expressVPN.

I'm curious what challenges you faced. I went once (a little over 3 years ago) and used a vpn fairly frequently (on and off as needed.) I think I even found and signed up for one while completely behind the great firewall.

Now, of course, I'd recommend setting it all up before going, but I've heard that it's still relatively commonplace for Westerners and PRC mostly turns a blind eye.

I've been there for a while (2 years straight and more than 6 years since my first trip), I used many different VPNs providers and even setup my own servers.

Although the company is a bit shady and I'm pretty sure they have some connection with the party, Astrill is the best to use in terms of performance, bandwidth and ease of use. They recently added WireGuard support which is blazing fast.

However, if your priority is privacy, probably you should use your own server, or just stay out of China.

Also what about ssh?

It works quite well, but you need a host that isn’t blocked, and they tend to block AWS IPs, so you have to change the IP every now and then. For browsing SwitchyOmega works well with ssh.

They can definitely detect it: http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...

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