What is the reality of the internet in China, the GFW

AnthonySmith

Ok so we all kind of make a few jokes that we probably should not about the GFW.

But what is life really like in China when using the internet and what would it be like, or what WILL it be like when the AI gets involved and locks shit down faster than users can keep up?

It has always seemed like a cat and mouse game from the outside, but I wonder, from the inside, what are the real risks?

xxx

The Great Firewall is less about making it absolutely impossible for anyone to get around it, and more about maintaining ultimate control over the flow of information across China’s borders. Under normal circumstances, the system can tolerate a certain amount of circumvention, especially when access to the global internet is economically useful or necessary. But if something begins to spread in a way the authorities consider politically sensitive, socially destabilizing, or otherwise threatening, they retain the ability to tighten restrictions quickly.

Nor does the system block the entire internet outside mainland China. In practice, it targets a selected set of major, widely used websites, platforms, and online services based overseas. There are also legal ways to obtain cross-border internet access: Chinese telecom operators offer dedicated international network connections to businesses, although these services are generally available through corporate rather than individual accounts.

And the system does not have to catch every single person using a VPN in order to work. Simply making access to the outside internet require extra knowledge, effort, money, and a willingness to accept some risk is enough to divide users into two very different information environments.

In that sense, the point may not be to seal the border completely. It is to shape what the vast majority of people see by default, while preserving the ability to tighten control when necessary.

tulipyun

If a person has an average IQ, they will be able to bypass the GFW without difficulty.

If they lack this ability, they may indeed need protection from the GFW.

Advin

I went to mainland China recently and roaming SIM cards don't have GFW restrictions, so it didn't really feel like there was even a firewall except when I used hotel Internet. It's really not as locked down as I initially thought.

Mainland China residents who really care about having international access to the Internet likely already have access to high-speed VPNs, it's not like international connectivity is completely severed and my understanding is that high-speed VPNs are fairly easy to access there. I think the idea of GFW is to really just make it more of an inconvenience to access certain major services or websites.

If you think about it, I don't think LES or LET is blocked by GFW (and they both appear in Baidu search). Additionally, a few hosting providers (like us) accept Alipay as a form of payment through Stripe. A person in mainland China would have no issue searching for and purchasing a foreign VPS.

China also has equivalents to common apps that are ran by western companies and has been building their Internet infrastructure over a long period of time. If you can understand Mandarin (the English translations are not so great), they work quite well and I'm not sure there's a substantial practical need for most residents to access everyday foreign services like Google, YouTube, Twitter/X, etc. when alternatives already exist within the country.

For example,

Google = Baidu
YouTube = Bilibili/Douyin
WhatsApp = WeChat
PayPal = AliPay/WeChat Pay
ChatGPT = DeepSeek, Kimi, and others
Google Maps = Amap/Baidu Maps

rcy026

Some 10-15 years ago, I was working with a European company that have their own manufacturing in China. Getting internet access in China was not really a problem, we did not really notice any great firewall but we did not really try to hit it either so it was probably there but just not blocking our traffic.
But, when we tried to setup VPN for inter company connections across the world things got difficult. All IPSec was blocked and after we kept trying for days to get the tunnels up the internet connection suddenly shut down completely. After months of dealing with red tape trough local contacts and promising not trying to run VPN again, we got the internet connection back. This time, we contacted the right authorities and got permission to run company VPN. They wanted to know exactly what we would send trough the tunnels, to where, why and when. They also needed the personal information of any individual that could possibly use the VPN from the Chinese side. After some time we were approved to run company VPN and things just started to work.
I do no longer work with that company but they still have facilities in China and what I've heard from acquaintances still working there it's gotten a bit easier to get "real" internet access in China, you just have to know how to ask for it. You can still be shut down and they are not fond of encryption, but it's not a complete ban anymore.

NodeSuper

You can think of it as a way to protect users! Teenagers, in particular, are still developing and more vulnerable to harmful content, so this protection is well-intentioned.

In my view, misinformation from the Western world is the most concerning—they often seem to be living in their own bubble without realizing it. Their biases lead them to believe that it is the Chinese who are out of touch with reality. I think the only effective way to counter these rumors and prejudices is to visit the country and see it for yourself, rather than relying on biased and unreliable media to form your understanding.

Hitori0221

In my experience using the internet in China, accessing the wider internet is usually easier than many people imagine. A decent paid proxy service, which we call an “airport” in China, or a proxy running on your own VPS will usually get you access to Google, YouTube, Twitter, and so on. For people comfortable tinkering with networks, the main hassles are the extra cost, finding decent routes, and occasionally dealing with nodes that stop working.

Things can get much worse around politically sensitive dates or events. Lots of nodes may stop working at once, IPs from certain hosting networks may become particularly prone to blocking, and a setup that normally works fine may suddenly need replacing. Personal use can still lead to penalties, too. You cannot assume everyone else will be fine just because you have never had trouble yourself.

The GFW existed before Xi came to power. I remember being able to access more overseas websites directly over a decade ago, and there was more room for discussion on Chinese platforms. Since Xi took power, my impression is that internet controls have become increasingly strict. That change is also visible on domestic platforms. Topics that used to be discussed openly can now get posts deleted, hidden from search results, or accounts penalized.

From the outside, it is hard to tell how much of this censorship is directly required by the government and how much comes from companies going further on their own. I think both happen. Missing sensitive content can get a platform in trouble with regulators, while deleting an ordinary post by mistake usually carries much smaller consequences. Companies have an incentive to make their moderation rules more restrictive. Users gradually adjust how they speak, avoiding certain topics or using abbreviations, homophones, and images to express themselves.

As for why the GFW exists, I think political control over information is the main reason. Restricting incoming information and making political content harder to circulate widely serve the government’s goals of maintaining political stability and controlling public opinion. I also accept that access to more information does not automatically give someone the ability to recognize propaganda. People with limited media literacy can be influenced by domestic propaganda, foreign propaganda, and misinformation alike. We also need to discuss who gets to decide what information the public can access and how that power should be kept in check.

The economic effects are substantial too. I do not know how much protecting local businesses figured in the GFW’s original design, but I think it has given them a more favorable competitive environment. Chinese platforms already cover messaging, video, shopping, payments, and most other everyday needs. Many people use these services to keep in touch with friends and colleagues and make their everyday purchases. Accessing overseas services takes extra money and effort, so they have little incentive to get around the GFW. They do not feel that they “have no internet” just because they do not use Google or YouTube.

This environment has also created plenty of business opportunities in international connectivity. Proxy subscriptions, relay services, routes optimized for China, and IPLC or IEPL circuits all find customers willing to pay for stable connections. Routing and bandwidth quality also affect prices, while the GFW adds to the cost of keeping connections working. Private circuits have legitimate business uses. Reselling that capacity or operating proxy services for individual users involves additional regulatory risks.

When a business has been reselling international private circuit capacity at scale for years, I find it hard to believe that everyone upstream is completely unaware of its eventual use. It makes me wonder whether some of this is quietly tolerated. I have no evidence of who knows what, who might be allowing it, or whether anyone is providing political protection.

Proxy tools and detection methods have kept evolving in response to each other. For the technical details, GFW Report publishes research based on actual measurements. Aodun also openly sells a system for monitoring international VPN traffic and claims it can identify various proxy protocols. This kind of detection can use observable traffic patterns without decrypting the contents. How accurate the vendor’s “precise identification” really is would need independent testing.