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Ways to bypass GFW as a foreigner in Mainland China

I'm surprised to find out there are very few tutorials for westerners living in Mainland China to bypass the Great Firewall built by CCP. Maybe you come to Mainland China due to multiple reasons, such as academic communication,work or live here. However, popular VPN providers like ExpressVPN,NordVPN and surfshark can't work very well here. The VPN traffic and socks5 proxy traffic has already been precisely detected and blocked by GFW for ages.

What is GFW? 

The Great Firewall (GFW) of China is a nickname for the Chinese government's internet control system, built up for censorship purposes. It blocks or limits access to commonly-used foreign websites and services, such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and many Western news sites.

In simple terms, it works like a big digital wall that decides what people in China can or cannot see online. It's part of a broader effort by the Chinese government to control the flow of information and make sure that the internet in China follows local laws and policies, but it has caused great inconvenience to the daily lives of westerners living or just visiting Mainland China.

Now, I will introduce some new techniques for you to bypass GFW:

  1. Consider using proxy servers running advanced proxy protocols such as Vmess, Vless-Reality and Hysteria2 rather than VPN servers. These protocols are based on socks5 protocol which locates at the application layer of OSI model, and their performance are much greater than VPN protocols. You can buy those services from proxy providers("机场" in Chinese). They provide servers("节点" in Chinese) in multiple locations, even all over the world. Quality of service and locations they can provide depend on how much you pay. Price range is normally￥10-￥30 per month, and they support Alipay,WeChat Pay and even cryptocurrency as payment methods. If you have no idea where to find such proxy providers, I can invite you to some of them, but referral code have to be applied during registration.

  2. If you care about privacy and have basic knowledges about Linux commands, you can just set up by your own. Buy a Linux VPS, run scripts on it, and remember to use Cloudflare CDN since it sometimes optimize the connection. Nevertheless, there are limited locations to choose, and the performance may be worse than those set up by proxy providers.   Update: Now you even do not need a Linux server and a public IP address, a Windows PC running at your home is enough! If you need guidance about setting up your own proxy server at home, please contact me.

  3. Use mobile data when roaming in Mainland China. This is not hard for most of you, but the roaming fee can be very expensive. My Vodafone UK roaming fee can cost up to￡6.85 per day! In order to save as much as I can, I turned to Hong Kong eSIM card, whose roaming fee is not that expensive. I would recommend you the ISP called 3HK, 45GB data only cost HKD$268 for 365 days, or China Telecom in Macao.


These are all methods that come to my mind for now. If you have questions, feel free to ask me or leave a comment. Thank you! 

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