The true (sort of) story about VPNs in China
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Most of the population of China cannot afford or obtain a VPN (Virtual Private Network). For the privileged portion who do manage to purchase and install a VPN, does that solve their global internet access problem?
Some people claim that, with a good VPN, you can see anything on the global internet in China. But I don't think that's quite true. Sometimes I direct my students (all of whom have VPNs) to various Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles, and they say, "Sorry, Prof. Mair, I can't access that in China" (blocked without warning or explanation twenty-some years ago*). The problem is even more acute with YouTube.
YouTube has all sorts of stuff: richly informative, inflammatory, educational, political, DIY, linguistic, etc., etc. Practically anything one can imagine, except probably outright pornography. The Chinese government is deathly afraid that its citizens might see YouTube content that is critical of Xi Jinping, the CCP, and so forth. So YouTube is a no-no, and that means nature films, music, poetry, art, archeology, chemistry, physics, recipes, Chinese / Japanese / Indian / Iranian / etc. culture. How impoverished the Chinese people are because of the benighted policies of their government! The nearly 15 BILLION videos on YouTube are off limits to Chinese citizens. And that's just YouTube. Think of all the internet riches that are unavailable to the people of China. No wonder so many of them are desperate to go abroad to study where they have free access to the internet.
Here's a typical comment by a Chinese citizen who tries to be patriotic and upbeat when I ask them about the efficacy of VPNs while they're back in China to visit family, do a bit of fieldwork, and so forth:
Yes with VPN you do see everything in China! However I don’t easily or often use it. Also, it only works from time to time. In many cases the VPN can’t be connected.
They are speaking the honest-to-god truth. Q.E.D.
However, some exceptionally entitled / wealthy individuals fare better with their VPNs. Here's what one told me:
My VPN can watch YouTube and ANY website. It really depends on what VPN you are using and how expensive your VPN is. My VPN is relatively expensive, over 500 RMB/ year (to ensure the connectivity and keep in touch with you haha!). I guess that student is probably using a free or very cheap VPN.
A colleague who is a native of the PRC went back last summer and reports:
This is ONE of the reasons why I haven't been back to China since November, 2012.
I should note that virtually all of my PRC graduate students are from well-off families.
I was wondering if what is true about internet accessibility on the mainland is also true of Hong Kong under the National Security Law. Here's what one Hong Kong colleague has to say on that score when she goes to China:
From my experience, if I have a sim card from Hong Kong, and as long as I don't use free wifi on the Mainland, I am able to use WhatsApp, Facebook, receive hku email, and probably browse Youtube, as well. I don't even have to use VPN. But if you don't have a HK sim card, you will need to use VPN to do this all.
Then there are the ultra privileged VPN holders (e.g., ranking CCP officials, recruited scientists, and the like) who usually do not have difficulties with connectivity and accessibility — less than 1% of the population.
Bear in mind that it is getting near Party palaver party period ("4 p " prime time), i.e., the dog days when the head honchos of the CCP go to frolic at the Beidaihe seashore and hold their most secretive, sensitive meetings, which means that it is also the time to ratchet up control of the internet many more notches, so that even premier VPNs may get shut down for awhile.
Xi Jinping and his closest associates are always complaining about the lack of creativity and innovation in the arts and sciences of China. They do not have far to look for the reason why it is so.
———–
*Chinese officials have a strange way of telling people they are being refused something for which they legally appled. For example, if you apply for a visa and the Chinese government refuses to grant one to you, don't bother to ask why you have been denied a visa, they will simply say, "YOU should know" (just like that) and send you away, without giving you any hint of a reason why you have been denied a visa.
Selected readings
- "'Tis the summer season for choking off VPNs" (8/17/24)
- "China VPN redux" (7/17/24) — with lengthy bibliography
- "What it's like inside the Great Firewall" (7/31/24)
- "God use VPN" (12/28/15)
- "Beidaihe: Use by Communist Party" — the summer retreats (aka "summer summits") of the top leaders of the CCP are highly secretive, and strange — sometimes extremely dangerous and destructive — things happen before or after they take place (e.g., the demise of Marshal Lin Biao, on September 13, 1971, the ejection of former president Hu Jintao from the XXXX on ZZZZ), and the mega explosions with the force of tactical nuclear weapons that occurred at Tianjin on August 12, 2015, especially when it is known that contentious issues are in the air.
[For the safety and security of the many informants who helped me compile this post, I am not mentioning any of them by name.]
wgj said,
July 29, 2025 @ 9:29 am
I believe those are true stories, but they are also incomplete stories. I assume that most if not all of Prof. Mair's students are humanities majors, which would explain why they can only buy a expensive VPN when they need one. STEM majors – of which China has a lot – usually know where to get cheap or free VPNs that work, even though they may only work for a few months before you have to switch to the next one. CS majors usually know how to build a VPN themselves, which costs very little and is never unblocked if set up well (because from the state's perspective, going after a private server that is used by a handful of people isn't worth the trouble, as opposed to a commercial provider with millions of users).
magni said,
July 29, 2025 @ 11:00 am
As wgj said, the tech-savvy have an easier time in self-hosting a proxy server (and subsequently even a personal VPN service) or turning to a reliable & inexpensive provider. On a related note, it is also the Chinese tech community that provides the world's best ecosystem of VPNs and software suites aimed at helping people circumvent Internet censorship. There are collaborative efforts between Chinese, Iranian and Russian developers.
Having that knowledge, however, is no less a privilege than being able to afford a 500RMB/year VPN. Throughout high school from 2013 to 2019, I've always wanted to secure uncensored Internet access, but with the resources that I had as "the tech kid in the class", my attempts invariably ended up with myself going back to use the shabby FreeGate (created by Falun Gong), a copy I downloaded thanks to a bunch of warmhearted fellow netizens from corners of the Internet. I became better informed of the best practices of dodging censorship and getting a VPN during undergraduate years studying in a major that's quite similar to Computer Science.
Ever since, I've been trying to gauge just how difficult it really is to bypass the GFW. Based on my experience, I'd say that for even the most educated people outside of tech, like those in the humanities, getting a working VPN is a real challenge. The biggest reason is that the internet simply wasn't designed for the average person to have to constantly circumvent censorship. Technologies like proxy servers, VPNs, and SSH tunnels were either repurposed for this fight or are too much hassle for anyone who wants a solution that "just works." This technical barrier is a hidden cost that keeps most people from using cheap, homemade solutions. And they just give up.
Victor Mair said,
July 29, 2025 @ 12:14 pm
@wgj and magni
Copious thanks to both of you.
After making this post yesterday, I received about a dozen communications from folks who have had a variety of experiences in VPNdom. All that they say is compatible with what you two have spelled out.
Tomorrow, after writing a post about a T-shirt with a famous poem written in 207 AD, I will write a successor to this post, namely, "The true (sort of) story about VPNs in China, part 2"
Bob Moore said,
July 29, 2025 @ 3:31 pm
I visited China in 2015 while I was working for Google. Google sites are often blocked in China, so Google set up a vpn on my corporate laptop, which let me access both internal and public Google sites. It was inconvenient, because most of the time I could not access any Google sites without the vpn, and with the vpn I could access *only* Google sites. I visited multiple tourist destinations in China, and when I reached my final destination, Shanghai, I found I could reach Google sites without the vpn. I don't know whether it was the time, the location, or simply that I had been spied on enough at that point that they decided I wasn't going to cause any trouble. Google, by the way, required that the laptop I took to China be wiped clean immediately before I went and as soon as I returned.
wgj said,
July 30, 2025 @ 4:46 am
Since this is the Language Log, I find it important to point out that we're misusing the term VPN here – as is pretty much everybody else, except @Bob Moore in the story above, which is about an actual VPN.
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and as the name suggests, the main function is to provide private communication (shielded from third parties) among a group of peers, even when some of those peers are physically remote and not part of the local network (thus virtual).
The ability to communicate with the wider Internet through an exit gateway of the VPN was a minor and optional functionality of VPN systems, which was – and still is – turned off by default in corporate VPNs for security reasons, like Bob's one at Google. By contrast, educational institutions like universities, which prioritize information access over security, usually had the exit gateway activated, in order to allow students to access the private network (e. g. homework assignment) and public Internet (research to do said homework) simultaneously.
It was out of this university VPN setup that people started to realize that the system can be (mis)used to circumvent network blockage. In late 2000 and early 2010, before commercial VPN became available, university VPNs were practically the only game in town when you wanted to jump over a network firewall. And when the commercial VPN industry got established during the 2010s, they simply adopted the term "VPN" because that's what their customers were looking for, even though what they're offering is not the original functionality of an actual VPN, but a system that mimics a VPN's exit gateway to the Internet.
The proper technical term for what people nowadays commonly refer to as VPN – and what we're talking about in this post – are network proxy or private tunnel. A proxy is a service that accesses information on your behalf, a tunnel is a system that let you reach locations otherwise blocked.
This linguistics distinction is important in regards to Chinese laws and regulations on VPN. In fact, the term VPN doesn't come up – because the Chinese regulators do understand the technical stuff well and know it's not about actual VPNs. The term they use instead is "illegal/unregulated communication channels" (非法通信渠道) – a very broad term that has the benefit of being independent from specific technologies involved.
Another important thing to note is that contrary to common believe, VPNs aren't banned in China. Two kinds of VPNs are allowed: 1. Actual VPN used by corporations, including VPNs by Chinese providers who have a license to operate such a service, as well as VPNs by foreign providers used by foreign companies (especially multinationals) in China, provided that the company register their VPN with the Chinese authorities. 2. Proxy services that circumvent the Great Firewall, by Chinese providers with a license to provide such service. This is completely above-board, though the service is usually euphemistically called "dedicated network line" or "network acceleration service". It is oriented at corporate clients and costs upwards of 30K CNY a year. The internet access is still censored, but much less so – you can visit Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc., but not FLG. The provider will cooperate with the police when asked – and they tell this to their customers upfront.