Long time stalker, but I finally signed up! Maybe I have dragged it out to not get too addicted, but it seems like that plan has failed.. ;)

Now for the question:
Can anyone recommend a VPN provider (well, functionally proxy) that works in (South) China these days? Because of the holidays the CCP is blocking everything they can to ensure that.. well let's not get political.

Priorities: Reliability > Privacy > Cost (trial or guarantee would be great though)

Thanks :)

A proxy isn't a vpn but I'd recommend Mullvad all the way! No clue as for whether or not it works in china, though.

And welcome!

@linuxxx Thanks (for both the welcoming and the recommendation)! I read enough from you on privacy matters to know you're not fucking around with this topic.

As for the terminology for these services, IMO while mostly using VPN technology, it functions rather as a proxy. I would consider something a VPN functionally if its use is to, well, establish a virtual private network and access those network resources and not just to act as a tunnel to a remote gateway. But please enlighten my if I'm stumbling in the dark.

@saucyatom A seemingly good article here: https://howtogeek.com/247190/...

@linuxxx Well, that article is describing the technical difference, though not entirely correct. A VPN doesn't have to be encrypted. Then there are also things like shadowsocks, which is based on socks, but encrypted. Also a VPN doesn't have to forward all traffic, that depends entirely on the setup/configuration.

If I connect to my company's VPN, it will be used to allow me to access the network from the outside. Normal web traffic doesn't go trough there. That's what I would consider a VPN from a functional POV.

If a VPN is set up to only be used as a gateway, it functions rather as a proxy, no matter the encryption.

@saucyatom I've never heard of an unencrypted vpn, could you enlighten me of that one?

@linuxxx openvpn can do so, PPTP as well

Summary of my experiences:

Mullvad is alright, but it doesn't work well in China. I can't get it installed on Windows though and the Linux CLI client doesn't allow the selection of a server/location (if I didn't miss anything).

For China, I'd recommend ShadowSocksR. I hosted a server on Azure and it works as good as it can get. If you can manage to compile it for arm you should be able to run it off a RPi as well.