UPDATE: October 22, 2019, 1:09 p.m. EDT This story has been updated following news that a NordVPN server was breached.
Coined more than two decades ago, the term "Great Firewall of China" refers to the Chinese government's ongoing efforts to regulate and censor the internet within the borders of the country's mainland. It's a play on the name of the Great Wall of China — as in, the sprawling, millennia-old landmark that's one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
You could make the argument that the Great Firewall is a world wonder, too — as in, it'll have you wondering how the heck you'd make it through a trip to China without a means to stay in touch with friends, pull up driving directions, or fight off jet lag with Netflix.
Much like the Great Wall, the Great Firewall was built for the purpose of keeping things out — only instead of deterring nomadic tribes' invasions, it targets foreign websites while slowing down cross-border internet traffic. And whereas the Great Wall ends where the Bohai Sea begins, the Great Firewall seemingly knows no bounds, affecting thousands of websites — everything from news outlets to social media platforms and apps and search engines. (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Reddit, YouTube, Netflix, and even Google are all no-gos.) At present, it's the largest system of censorship in the world.
Fortunately, there's a relatively easy workaround to the Great Firewall that can get you access to most sites that are blocked in China if you ever travel there: setting up a virtual private network.
A VPN, as they're more commonly known, is a service that establishes a secure network over a public one by routing your connection through its own private server(s). Through this process, the VPN masks your internet protocol (IP) address — the specific number that's assigned to your device on a local network — obscuring your exact location and allowing you to circumnavigate geoblocking and censorship. A VPN will also encrypt your data, making it impossible for hackers and authorities alike to see what you're downloading. It's basically the best way to stay safe on the internet.
Here's the thing about VPNs, though: Save for a few (very limited) services that have been formally approved by the government, they've technically been banned in China since 1997, when Chinese officials passed a law criminalizing the act of accessing the "foreign internet" without its specific permission. (That hasn't stopped unauthorized VPN providers from operating, mind you, although they're constantly playing a game of cat and mouse with Chinese authorities, who block servers, throttle bandwidth, or simply shut down services entirely if they show up on their radar; the providers that endure are the ones that can adapt.)
Oddly enough, China only just started enforcing this two-decades-old ban on the individual level within the past year, and nowadays anyone who's caught using a VPN the state hasn't personally sanctioned will be slapped with a $145 fine.
So, is it even worth it to run a VPN connection in China? At this point, at least, signs point promisingly to "yes": China was one of the top 5 biggest markets in the world for VPNs in a 2018 data analysis, with just over 30 percent of internet users there using one regularly to browse the internet freely — findings that seem to suggest authorities' VPN detection tactics aren't as adept as they'd maybe like them to be.
If you're trying to decide which VPN to use during an upcoming excursion to China, be sure to consider the quantity and location(s) of providers' servers, their connection speeds, the length of their plan(s) compared to the length of your trip, their customer service track record — 24/7 availability is ideal in case you experience any random technical difficulties — and their security offerings. Oh, and no matter which VPN you wind up using, remember to install it *before* you jet off to East Asia.
Keep scrolling to check out Mashable's official list of the best VPNs for China based on what we've read in tons of customer reviews; be sure to hit the grey arrow in the upper right corner of each card to expand each write-up.
Editor’s Note: IPVanish is owned by J2 Global, the parent company of Ziff Davis, Mashable’s publisher. Any J2 products featured on Mashable are covered independently by our content team.
