Good VPN

Hi Explorerfrommalaysia,

I suggest you to visit Connecting to the internet in China where you might find some information on the subject.

Good luck.

Anas,
Expat.com Team

Enjoy your trip! 

I've had great results with vpnbaron recently in mainland china

Thank you for the info Christoph, will try that! 🙂

Awesome thank you Anas! 🙂

People recommended Express VPN but it's terrible. I'm from an IT background and recommend Nord VPN.

I use NordVPN too. I am quite happy about their service, but I used Surfshark during my holidays at Beijing as they are quite new, so servers are not blocked yet so I could easily use Netflix and all social media. If someone is planning the trip there my friend shared promo code: SURF2YDEAL it should still work I guess

Purevpn is also a great option, Its servers work great in Beijing also there streaming, and internet speed is fantastic, which can be a plus point for you as you want to access social sites. If you want to test it, You can also take its 3 days trial. [link moderated]

Thanks guys! Appreciate the information!

Welcome

hei there! - I have a good solution for you, if you are still on this thread/forum..

Please get back to me if interested!

Hello Jack, how's life China so far? Hope all is well!
I am using expressvpn and recently I have been encountering frequent disconnection...Got the email update from VPN team and they are working on the issues now, hopefully they will get this fixed soon, without VPN I am like losing connection to the outside world lol. Which VPN are you using?

hei Explorer
                            Thanks for your response. I guess i can say i'm an old-timer in China as i've been there over 7 years (though i'm back in Australia for now). Most things about living in China are quite reasonable and even nice -eg. friendly people, cheap cost of living, etc but access to the outside world via the net has always been a challenge...until now! I have been using Betternet on my smart phone as my latest vpn which is usually quite useable, and free too, however this latest tech i referred to has been given a top-level rating by my good old friend over there who has been using it with great success for months! - quite simply, it is a USB drive sized device with a 3-year VPN service already installed in it - all ready to go after you plug it in to your laptop and take a minute to configure it. It can be used in any wifi area. We are keeping the source a secret for now, and the price i am asking for it is just 430RMB with free postage inside of China - you can't beat this price as i've already done the research and its commercial price out there is much more than this. You can pay via Wechat or Alipay and delivery directly from the supplier will be done within days. If this interests you, please message me again or we could talk on Wechat next time,  Cheers! 
Jack

Explorerfrommalaysia wrote:

Hello Jack, how's life China so far? Hope all is well!
I am using expressvpn and recently I have been encountering frequent disconnection...Got the email update from VPN team and they are working on the issues now, hopefully they will get this fixed soon, without VPN I am like losing connection to the outside world lol. Which VPN are you using?

We have been using Shadowsocks-4.0.6 for the past year. It is good. Stable.

For me Nord worked decently in China, but you always have to keep yourself updated which ones work because Chinese are constantly trying to block them. Also, I had some troubles with speed so I recommend reading this, it helped me to improve browsing speeds significantly.

I recommend using a proxy over a VPN.

If you look up the difference between the two you will find all the VPN providers saying that the VPN is encrypted and a proxy is not, they only say this because they want people to use their service. The company that provides the proxy I use does encrypt.

I have been using proxies for close to 3 years, it started with Shadowsocks which was great for a couple of years before it was blocked. After that, I purchased a router with a VPN built-in but that system was also taken out.

Right now I have a subscription to an encrypted proxy service that uses the companies own apps (PC, Mac, Android, and IOS).

I paid 600 for a year's subscription to the VIP service, they have 2 cheaper options, if I remember correctly. I have access to 3 servers, 2 in Japan one in the USA and I can connect up to 5 or 6 devices, I forget the exact number but it is more than enough for my wife and I, and with one to spare should my mother-in-law come to stay with us.

Proxies tend to be far more stable, with a higher bit-rate - look at me talking like I am some sort of expert - they are not infallible but the time it takes to connect is much swifter and down-time I have experienced is far less frequent than what I remember from my time using VPNs.

The one drawback with proxies, compared to VPN is that you do not get the number of servers to choose from. I know that people all over the world like to use VPNs to access content blocked by location, you do not have this option

They most certainly are not good choices for China, you're not even in China so how would you know what works and doesn't work here??!?!