And rest assured, the party has a list of people and their dogs, and will use it at a moment of convenience.
Public facing VPNs are quite trivial to detect, even if you don't own your country telecom infra.
That’s not really how it works, considering how many people use them. In the recent past they just shut down all “suspicious” looking traffic when there are protests. This has false positives, which is why it’s not always active. Plus allowing VPNs in normal times acts as sort of a social pressure release.
And when the police needs a reason to put you away for a while, everyone and their dog can get arrested for illicit internet traffic.
Trivial bypasses only fuel further government abuse. Your VPN is about as strong as your kneecaps in an authoritarian regime.