The true (sort of) story about VPNs in China, part 2

August 15, 2025 @ 6:12 am · Filed by under Censorship, Language and computers

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The reason for this part 2 about VPNs in China is that so many good responses to my inquiries about VPNdom in China came pouring in just after the first post went out.  Also, there is such a wide variety of different viewpoints and experiences that you cannot expect there to be a single standard out there.  One thing has become very clear to me, and that is that the Chinese government wants to keep people on their toes and resort to a lot of self-policing.  This is common government policy in China, not just with regard to the internet, but to many aspects of social and political life.

For an up-to-date comprehensive primer about VPN usage in the PRC, I recommend that you read carefully this article:  "Are VPN's Legal in China?"  Not really.  It's a tricky business. You can be heavily fined and get in real trouble if the internet police catch you with one, especially if you use it to read / write something the CCP disapproves of.

It's a catch-22.  If the government catches you using an expensive, good VPN that will enable you to read most of what's on the global internet, you could be in deep do-do with the authorities.  If they catch you using a cheap VPN, it's pretty much useless because you can't use it to go to the places you want to go to.  The government won't mind, and they will monitor everything you do on the internet.

To give you an idea of what VPNdom is like in China, I will compile half-a-dozen or so of the most interesting  communications I received.  Two things to keep in mind:

1. All of my informants are elite, privileged, highly educated, and many of them are foreigners.  They are in no way representative of the vast majority of the Chinese population, most of whom have no idea of what a VPN is.

2. When it wants to, for whatever reason, the government can shut down the whole internet completely, as it did during the worst times of the dynamic zero COVID lockdowns, and as it did during the white paper protests in November 2022.

As with part 1 of this series, I will not reveal the identity of my informants, except for two professional legal experts.

An American scholar at Chinese research institute:

The situation is that with a VPN (and there are many companies offering China-friendly options) one can access everything in China that’s available in the west sans fail. All those apps you mention, including TikTok (Chinese version Douyin), are completely accessible, as are US university email servers.

An American professor at a top tier American university in China:

Access depends on the kind of VPN one is using. For the one we use at XXX Shanghai (Cisco) we can access everything, including YouTube. I suspect most university VPNs will work as well.

An American professor at another top tier American university in China who for many years told me that no matter what VPN he used, he couldnt access Language Log:

Basically I would say that with a good VPN you can access almost anything, but wouldn't go so far as to say everything, at least not in my experience.
 
As I've asked around, people note that it does depend on how good the VPN is, and I've heard that people may need to switch VPNs from time to time to stay ahead of the game. There may at times be other factors; for example, one person here mentioned even with a VPN she had trouble with some sites, but attributed it to the fact that she is not using an IPhone.
 
Here on campus our access is unusually good, and accessing things like Google, U-Tube and so forth is not a problem; I wouldn't say there are many sites I can't reach. But there are a few things that I haven't been able to access even from on campus, and unfortunately the Language Log posts have been on this list.
 
But, as a post-script…. I hadn't tried accessing Language Log posts for a while because it never worked, but I just now gave it a try using our current VPN and – for the first time here – it worked! (There was a post on Taiwanese I had particularly wanted to read.) So, maybe, at least for the moment, things are better than I thought.

in general, most of my correspondents in China have told me that they cannot access Language Log.

A Taiwanese professor at a top university in Hong Kong:

Based on my experience in Hong Kong, I haven’t encountered any difficulties accessing Google or YouTube. However, TikTok and ChatGPT aren’t available without a VPN. (I’m currently using ChatGPT via VPN.) Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit are all accessible here without issue.

From what I’ve heard from my students in Mainland China, they need to purchase high-quality VPNs to reach these platforms. Many even subscribe to several and rotate between them, since VPN access can sometimes be disrupted. Interestingly, they refer to VPNs as “tīzǐ 梯子” (ladders), and they describe it as ‘climbing the ladders’—pá tīzǐ 爬梯子—to see the world. I find that metaphor both poignant and powerful.

A Chinese graduate student visiting her family in China for the summer:

About the internet situation in China: with a good VPN, you can usually access pretty much any international platforms or social media like YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, Discord, etc. I’ve been using VPNs for years, and once it’s connected, the interne

A Chinese language teacher at a top tier American university:

I just checked around about this matter. The answer I received is that, if you have a GOOD VPN, yes, you can see anything on the internet in China. But it has to be a GOOD one. 
 
When I was in China last summer, I didn’t buy a VPN, because it is too mafan ("troublesome"), so I don’t have any personal experience about how VPNs work in China.

A college application adviser / coach in a major Chinese eastern seaboard city:

As for the VPN issue, 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 who had a lot of trouble with her VPN is probably using a free or very cheap one.

A Cantonese professor at a top Hong Kong university:

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.

An M.A. graduate from Penn:

I have been using a VPN program provided by a Japanese company, which includes numerous nodes, including the US and Hong Kong, and even access to Chat-GPT.  However, I have encountered issues when using it on Apple devices with iOS systems. Some foreign websites fail to load properly. Google and Twitter work normally, but other websites frequently display errors. Devices with Windows and Android systems do not experience these issues.

These problems began about two weeks ago and have existed until now. I am not sure if they are related to the Beidaihe meeting, the big military parade forthcoming in Beijing, and so forth.

Donald Clarke, a specialist on Chinese law:

Officially authorized VPNs (there is such a thing) are permitted, but of course they will not be secure. Neither providing nor using an unauthorized VPN is, strictly speaking, legal; people have been punished for both kinds of offenses. Of the two, providing an unauthorized VPN is much more serious; using an unauthorized VPN less so. If you're wondering about yourself, I have never heard of a foreigner being punished for using an unauthorized VPN, even though it is deemed illegal. As a professor from a prestigious university, you run a very low risk.

I'm told that Astrill provides the most reliable service. This is fine if you're just concerned with getting outside the Great Firewall and not concerned about security or confidentiality. Since China has the technical capacity to detect VPN use and block it, any VPN that is not blocked is, I suspect, operating with permission (even if it's not officially authorized). And that makes me wonder why the state would permit it.

This is a good summary of the situation by William Farris, former general counsel for Google for the greater China region (here and here).

In conclusion, using a VPN in China is pretty much hit-or-miss, cat-and-mouse.  As with so many things in China, the regulations are inexplicit; they are designed to keep you guessing.

Are VPNs legal in China?  Sort of, but not really (at least not for the full purposes of which they are intended).  It's part of what is called the gray zone / area, a concept that is also used in diplomacy / warfare.

Bottom line:  One of the most strongly blocked websites in China is Language Log.  I've heard from many people in China, even those with "good" VPNs and those who love to read LL when they're someplace which has a free and open internet, that it is not available to them in China.

 

Selected readings

August 15, 2025 @ 6:12 am · Filed by under Censorship, Language and computers


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