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Any other Tildes users posting from within the great firewall?
It's nice having english language forums that don't require a vpn to access. Anyone got any other suggestions and any recommendations for vpns that work on mobile data reliably? I've found PIA, Nord, and Proton to not work but Surfshark does for now if intermittently (more reliably on wifi).
You're the first to my knowledge that has made themselves known as such.
As such, a giant wall of text about what "boots on the ground" life is like in China would be greatly appreciated.
Zerotier can be thought of as a censorship-resistent VLAN that works on pretty hostile networks. If configured with a gateway outside the firewall, it serves as a flexible VPN endpoint.
Honestly I don't feel very qualified to give a boots on the ground description. I'm here for work and not here for as long as I'd like to be as there's so much to see and do. I wouldn't exactly say I'm a tourist but I'm also not here long enough to call myself an immigrant either. Caveats aside:
It's a completely different tech paradigm to western europe. It's functionally cashless with a duopoly of payment apps and if you can't get those to work you're up a creek without a paddle. Sure if you're a tourist and sticking to the main tourist areas you'll probably be fine with cash but a lot of places you wont be.
Back to those apps, they define digital life. Sure you're using an android or apple phone but in reality you're using the WeChat and AliPay apps for most things. They have sub apps in a similar way to electron. It's accessed through QR codes. I've never scanned this many QR codes in my life before. Everything from booking the train to booking a museum to paying the local corner shop is done with a QR code embedded in a website or printed. Paying money to friends is also done within these apps and all the banks of course have their own mini programs similar to online banking.
I speak awful Chinese. This is a major stumbling block in a way that it isn't in other countries. I'll admit with English as my first language to being blessed with the default second language when I travel and for using local websites and programs. In China however this isn't the case and it's a mixed bag whether you can auto translate using WeChat. AliPay mini programs are more reliably translated by AliPay but WeChat can only autotranslate if it is a website and those are the minority. For all of the little programs from the washing machine to the checkout apps (a lot of shops require you to use their miniapp at the checkout) they're all in Chinese and all the prompts are in Chinese in the app. It's a major stumbling block that I'm rapidly getting better at but if I had two phones (to use the camera translate program) or a reliable mobile data vpn (to use google lens on the screen) I could do it all a little quicker.
You've got to get comfortable with everywhere having all your details. Everywhere. Your identity is tied to your mobile phone number (a side point, you need a Chinese number to use most things which is rather unlike most other Countries that just let you use any number from anywhere) and most places you book or try to interact with will require your phone number and or passport number.
I'll add anything else I can think of later.
Thanks for link to Zerotier, I've have to look into it. I was considering teamviewer or something similar for a while but the latency put me off it and a VLAN is a pretty good alternative.
How safe do you need to be when talking about stuff like this? How authoritarian they are about seemingly mundane conversations?
To be fair I haven’t been to the mainland in like 6-7 years by now but in my experience people greatly overestimate the competence of the CCP at doing anything effectively, including surveillance. Some of my relatives are very anti-CCP, write about it on WeChat of all things, still go to the mainland to see relatives and have yet to be gulaged
I don't really think it's people overestimating more than people being told blatantly lies every day.
If it's anything like the mounds of bureaucratic paperwork that has to be filled in for anything to happen that slows everything down and makes things easy to get lost in the system then the surveillance can't be that effective.
People are bombarded with the worst anti communist propaganda there is.
The CCP could care less about what regular people talk about online.
The firewall is more concerned about USA and western fake news entering there and the data collecting.
There are some Brazilians living there with Instagram accounts like @felipe.durante and @marinaguaragna and they post their daily lives there including clearing things about absurd fake news like that one that reading the bible in public is forbidden and not having christian church's there.
You can have Instagram, Facebook or whatever accounts you want using VPN without any issues. It is only an issue if you start spreading absurd anti China propaganda inside China with it.
Here in Brazil we let fake news run rampant and we are paying for it.
I am planning on visiting there next year or in 2026.
So they don't care... As long as you're not criticizing the regime.
No, no, no...only the absurd lies, as determined by the CCP.
If that's what you both understood...
Like I said, you can visit @felipe.durante profile and see his criticisms just fine.
But when you spread things like this and this constantly, that is a problem.
Some people believe Radio Free Asia, so there's that. Of course it should be banned there.
The same way misinformation about covid vaccines and ivermectin should be banned here in Brazil, but it is not and we had 700,000 deaths.
I'm pretty sure if you are a major influencer and start spreading things about the US government there will be people knocking at your door.
I am not saying that there is total freedom there. Such thing does not exist and shouldn't anyway, but it is always amplified here because of the whole cold war shenanigans.
PS: I think they are absolutely correct in blocking the USA internet and services from meta and google. So we probably will keep disagreeing in this matter.
Okay, but they also clamp down on tons of less absurd criticisms. That's why nothing happened on June 4th, 1989. I'm not sure what point you're driving at, but it's making me feel like that influencer you keep mentioning is mostly a CCP mouthpiece. And we can't see his criticisms because we can't read Portuguese...
And a red scare conspiracy theory is your first thought? He is not that big. That's what I say about the strong anti communist propaganda the USA perpetuates to this day.
There is not only one Brazilian working there too. Now China keeps everyone in his pockets? They have a massive population and still the first thought on our minds is that they are a super evil controlling villain like in a Hollywood movie.
My main point is that all government does shitty things. We in Brazil are basically a ruling theocracy full of evangelists who blocks any advancement on abortion laws and women's protection, we decimated and are still killing our indigenous people and giving their lands to billionaire farmers (we didn't have land reform and government keeps not talking about this), we are one of the countries with the biggest inequality and criminality, we have a lot of people hungry a and poor in the streets, we too treat protesters with violence and kill black and trans people like they are nothing and still we keep pointing fingers at China because of USA's red scare propaganda and the fact that we are basically ruled by the USA under the sheets. Gladly this is changing with our proximity to China and BRICS and the fall of USA nowadays.
We have some China experts here, like Elias Jabbour (who wrote the book China: socialism in the XXI century, which I disagree with a lot of points), so we probably have more mainstream information without a negative bias compared to the USA, but it is still absurd the amount of fake news here.
The USA is not much different in that regard. You may not have Jim Crow laws anymore, but ask black people if they feel safe or still live in fear. Same here in Brazil.
China have it's big share of problems, past and present (the cultural revolution was a disaster and should never happened), but it eradicated absolute poverty, it keeps religion in it's place, it already surpassed USA in technology and have mass high-speed public transportation everywhere. They are doing a lot of things right, but we keep in our high horses always bashing anything that comes from there and the east. Just take a look at anti China propaganda papers perpetuated by the USA with Chinese offensive caricatures.
But god forbid a country banning Instagram
Why is the USA so concerned about freedom of speech in China, to the point of founding Radio Free Asia, but couldn't care less and actively shake hands with Saudhi Arabia?
You are forgetting two things:
You're right that we don't agree on the opinion stuff, so I'll leave that alone. I do want to respond to this, though. One of the strongest parts of the US is that the government cannot restrict your speech and they take that extremely seriously.
The journalist who published Snowden's leaks lives in America, unmolested.
USA is known for it's absolute free speech.
If it's black people protesting, does this apply?
If you'd like to discuss the US's flaws I'm all for that, but posting "does free speech apply to black people?" with no follow-on is so clearly a nonserious provocative jab that it's not really a discussion.
Sure, sorry.
I'm just pointing out that these laws are always applied selectively.
It is what happens in reality here in Brazil. You are free to protest and criticize the government, but in reality teachers and students were attacked by the police in the last protest when they were privatizing some public schools.
We call ourselves a democracy, but the people didn't have a say at all in this matter. We are completely against this.
All people are equal, but black people came from slavery and is still kept at ghettos, are the most killed persons here and do not have access to good quality schools and jobs. So this is perpetuated indefinitely.
Racism is a crime, but nobody is being punished for it.
But then we go and point fingers at China and call it a dictatorship.
My understanding is that this is much of the reasoning for a lot of the restricted speech rules in other communist countries like Cuba.
The West has mastered equating 'stopping Western propaganda' with 'suppressing free speech.' There is overlap to be sure, but tbh the USA itself would be much better off if it banned Fox News as well.
And why is the USA so concerned about freedom of speech in China, but couldn't care less and actively shake hands with Saudhi Arabia?
Honestly if the government cares about me then I've fucked up somehow. I'm just a regular immigrant doing my job and not sticking my head above the parapet or doing anything wrong. Sure using a VPN isn't allowed and all that but they don't enforce that unless they need something to stick you with and if they need that then something else is up.
Thanks, it's neat to hear that China is (at least in my head) a bit more cyberpunk than the US, at least for now. Not good per-se, but interesting. It does make me wonder if computer literacy is slightly higher among the general populace in China compared to the US given the need to power through the firewall....it certainly motivated me to get through my parent's lockdown software in the 90s.
Anyway, my ZT config was to install zerotier on my home openwrt router, and my laptop/phone.
That let me easily hook it into my LAN and also provide internet gateway services with little extra config.
If you've got an employer which might be willing to bear the risk, if they'll let you run a node inside their work network it can fallback to tunnelling through HTTPS. That would provide a more-consistent path to route out, if possibly much slower.
In the rain/haze of the bigger cities at night (Shanghai recently gave me the vibe of it all quite strongly) it definitely has the aesthetic as well.
I don't think so since it's a lot less technical these days to get around "your parents" (read: government) firewall. It's installing an app your mate recommended and pressing the button that gets you around it. I might also be in a bit of a bubble but not everyone seems to bother either. People with degrees seem more likely to either for work research or youtube/porn.
I've got a machine outside the network I could give it a go spinning it up on.
Your last point about needing a phone number for anything reminds me a lot of India. I recently visited and you can't even order at a restaurant without giving out your phone number haha. You also can't get a native Indian SIM card, and therefore an Indian phone number, without having an Indian national ID. Everything is tied to your national ID. There are third party services that offer eSIM capabilities in India but the government seems to be cracking down on them. Airalo was a popular option that was recently banned without explanation.
Honestly that surprises me. I spent some time in India (New Delhi and nearby cities) a few years ago and got a simcard and phone number just fine from a bloke on the side of the road with an airtel stand, he needed my passport to set it up but beyond that it was fine. It might well have changed in the time since I was there but I easily paid cash for everything including restaurants and never needed a phone number for anything beyond phoning/data.
Ni Howdy!
Don't live there right now. Used to, back in the pre-internet era. From my friends who are still there, the only consistent recommendation is a half dozen different VPNs, any one or two of which may or may not work at any given day/phase of the moon/quirk of that instant's firewall config.
It's weirdly similar to bump keys and such. You've got a bunch in your bag and keep trying until one clicks. It'd be nice to have an automated tool for that but I can only think of autohotkey since you've got to try multiple protocols as well as providers.
It should be possible, even on Windows, to write a shell script to test a bunch in order, or even randomly.
Windows starting point
Hey, 外国人!
I was living in China during my first 18 months on Tildes! I am by no means a tech person, but Express VPN was the most popular and most effective VPN while I was there. It was also shockingly easy to get without already having a VPN, so keep that in mind next time you're in a mall and see a dirt cheap Oppo that seems way too powerful for the price tag.
Enjoy it! I miss living there every day. Have fun reading insane takes on what life is like there from westerners who have never stepped foot in the country.
I've heard mixed things about Express but being easy to get without still having a working VPN is a reassuring backup to have in mind.
I like to think of myself as fairly level headed and so assumed most of peoples worries were just peoples worries (as with most of my travels this has proved true and the reality on the ground is always fairly chill and safe if you've got some common sense and a willingness to roll with surprises and put yourself out there) but looking back to some of the things said and warned about before I came here from well meaning friends and colleagues has been rather entertaining.
I'm using Snowflake for people like you, who are forced to be behind statewide firewalls - https://snowflake.torproject.org/
Snowflake is
On desktop it's available as bowser addons, e.g. in Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/torproject-snowflake/
It's super easy, you just install and it runs - people from countries like PRC, Iran, Russia may use your Snowflake to get through the Firewall.
This is actually really cool concept!
PMed you with one. Alternatively a VPS with a VPN server/shadowsocks might work too.
There is a Chinese made gaming VPN that works really well too, but I can't remember the name....and it does some shady low level stuff to your network drivers to work.
Edit: Found it - https://www.uubooster.com
It opens up kinda like Steam, then lets you pick a destination region, then scans a list of routes from which you can choose the lowest ping for that particular game.
Edit 2: Many people used Express, but I found it to generally be terrible. Never pay for a full 6 months/year of VPN service. I had more than a few friends who did that, and then the VPN would barely work (if at all) for 3+ months. No refunds were ever given.
Thanks for the info. I've not tried Express so I'll avoid doing so. I did manage to get a refund for one of the providers but it was in the first 14 days so I think that was the only reason.
+1 for Shadowsocks. It's much better than any VPN provider in China, especially given the price. I pay 70 rmb every 3 months for 100GB of traffic.
What’s the real story on chinas economy right now? I see very mixed signals online
One thing I love about Tildes is getting to talk to a relatively small group of people from around the globe, whom I otherwise might not encounter in Texas
I don't honestly feel qualified to give a good answer. I didn't clarify in the OP but have talked about it further down that I'm here for work. I wouldn't exactly say I'm a tourist but I'm also not here long enough to call myself an immigrant either. From my perspective everything works and is fine? Things are available at prices I can afford and the cost of living is a lot lower than it was in western europe. The mass transit is dirt cheap and intercity high speed trains have been really reliable for the tourism I've done. I've enjoyed "China, actually" from Polymatter in the past as a look into the more wider economic situation and issues it may be facing but from the perspective of someone earning a wage and spending that on rent it's pretty similar to a lot of the rest of the world, prices have gone up, wages haven't gone up much but life still goes on. I've been trying to ask about different facets of life here from colleagues to get a better picture on prospects and changes over a wider window but my Chinese limits me a little with that.
This article is somewhat relevant to why you're seeing mixed signals online. As you mention, there's a lot of discourse and speculation about the positive and negative aspects of the Chinese economy and how it might weather its various economic struggles, whether manufactured by policy or not. But the article really underscores the perspective of a select group of people who achieved upward mobility and might feel like they're peaking in terms of their personal wealth growth outlook and the country's ability to stabilize a group of people that might be called the "middle class." So I think it's an interesting snapshot of that group's sentiments.
‘Garbage time of history’: Chinese state media pushes back on claims country has entered a new epoch
My bias is significant, and reporting on protests/unfinished properties/liquidation/bank withdrawal hurdles and whatnot could also be dismissed as such, so I'll point out what the greater financial world is doing instead :
"proliferation of ‘Emerging Markets ex-China’ equity strategies." Such as the Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets ex China "Now, a wide-ranging bfinance RFI has identified nearly 50 managers running live GEM ex-China portfolios — considerably more than can be found in major industry databases. Meanwhile, nearly 100 additional asset managers are either actively considering a launch or would be open to constructing an ex-China portfolio."link
The Big Three ratings:
Fitch: - "Fitch Revises Outlook on China to Negative; Affirms at 'A+'" - April 2024
"Moody's affirms China's A1 rating, changes outlook to negative from stable" (Dec 2023)
S&P hasn't changed since 2017 when they downgraded from AA- to A+, "citing risks from soaring debt"
Commentary follows.
Overall, global economies are not quite decoupling, but doing more de-risking and friendshoring. Keyword to watch: overcapacity.
Wait and see what the official response has been and will be.
IMF blog (Apr 2024):
IVPN works like 90% of the time for me in Russia. I've visited china recently and it worked there very reliably as well, both on wifi and mobile.
It's hard to get a 100% reliable VPN in a country that cracks down on them. Some of my friends have like 10 random free VPN apps installed on my phone which all look like they steal all of your data.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a go. I've got friends with similar I just don't feel comfortable trusting the free apps either so I've been sticking to "legit" or well known enough to trust paid solutions for now.
I was in China up until around this time last year. I switched between two VPNs: Astrill and wannaflix.net (which has v2ray and shadowsocks). I also bought, through Taobao, a router with Merlin preinstalled on it - so that I could install Astrill on the router itself.
Another suggestion for Shadowsocks. This site is a great resource to learn more about the various options.
When I visited in May, I used Mullvad on my laptop (Windows 10) and LetsVPN on my phone (iPhone 12 Pro). Mullvad took a bit of fiddling around to get working on my laptop and barely functioned on my phone (it seemed like it would connect for a few seconds, but then got disconnected?), while LetsVPN worked upon activation. All my use was on wifi networks though; a family member let me borrow a portable hotspot device that showed up as a wifi network on my devices, which I carried around when visiting places, and used their home wifi network when staying at their apartment.
With this setup, I could access all of my usual Western apps/websites that would otherwise be blocked on both devices. I could also use Wechat/Alipay and access Chinese services on my phone through LetsVPN.
I've never travelled to China; closest I've been is Hong Kong airport. Do private VPNs work in places like China? Like if you had a Wireguard or OpenVPN server hosted in another country, or in the cloud, do those work? Or are those protocols blocked?
You can buy SIM cards in HK that effectively give you HK internet (I used one from HKBN; shows up as HK in ipleak.net and I had no problems accessing Google services) while you are in China--but I think 180-days is the longest duration that is available. I think the China Mobile ones also work similarly, when purchased and activated in HK.
I had no problems SSH'ing to various boxes from within China while on the SIM card or using different public WiFi networks. sshuttle probably works
Wireguard and OpenVPN do both work but using publicly available (paid) VPN providers is a game of whack-a-mole. I've not tried free tiers as I've heard they give worse results and I've not yet tried a private tunnel beyond my work one. The caveat with the work one is because it's a legit govt approved one it allows me to access work services and servers but it has the same web blocking as not using a VPN.
Just arrived China yesterday. What's the ChatGPT equivalence in China?
I've only ever seen/heard of people using chatGPT through a vpn.
I seem to remember some guiding legislation putting Chinese alternatives slightly behind based on what you were allowed to train them on but I might be wrong.Edit: Chinese LLMs have to be approved by the govt and chatting to colleagues are considered less useful (Chinese source on what's approved so far (a little out of date) https://36kr.com/p/2621227318139272)
https://kimi.moonshot.cn/ looks pretty good and it doesn't seem to be on your list. Not sure what model it's using.
Edit: wait, it's Moonshot AI listed in the second batch