It's the world's most popular messaging app and almost everyone in China uses it to send messages, post updates about their lives, and share photographs. It is sort of China's equivalent of texting, Facebook, Twitter, maps and more, all rolled in one. You can also sometimes sing up for global data from your local carrier.Īnd if you have a smartphone, here's a list of handy apps: You might have to bring your passport in order to purchase a new phone number, and you likely will have to get your phone unlocked from your provider before you leave so you can switch to a local network when you arrive. Speaking of phones, local SIM cards can be bought pretty inexpensively at most airports, and phone shops. We recommend having several VPNs so you have a backup in case one goes down, just like Fan Binxing, the very inventor of the Great Firewall, who has six of them! Most VPNs can be set up to work on your tablet or phone as well, and can let you connect a few devices at once. Sadly, VPNs can go down or get shut down as well, so check the GreatFire Circumvention Central to see which VPNs are running reliably at any given time.
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Shadowsocks is working pretty well but is a bit trickier to set up! Most of those links are also affiliate links, so feel free to share with folks who need VPNs and like supporting artists and researchers. VyprVPN used to be strong but not so much lately, same with Astrill. We like ExpressVPN right now (as of December 2019) and our go to back up is Lantern. A VPN will allow you to 'climb the wall' and access the entire internet by routing it through another country. If you can't do without unfettered internet access during your time in China, you can buy a Virtual Private Network (VPN). To see if a particular website (like your own website) is accessible within China, you can enter the URL on. Major foreign press outlets, Wikipedia and other sources of information also are often inaccessible, and Google services like Gmail and YouTube, and others are totally blocked or at best very spotty. This means there's no Skype, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, and your phone won't always be able to send messages via WhatsApp, to give just a few examples. Using the internet in mainland China can be complicated as many news and social media websites and apps are blocked.Ĭhina deployed the Golden Shield Program, more commonly known Great Fire Wall in the early 2000s to restrict access to certain websites and searches of certain ‘sensitive’ keywords.