Hello. I was under the impression that most apps are banned from China, such as whats app etc. However, after arriving here I've found that everything still works fine. Does anybody know what this is about as I'm a tad confused and don't want to get into trouble. Thanks
First thing I did when I landed in China was Google “tank man” and was surprised and kinda disappointed when the iconic tianenman square image came up immediately. Because I had been told by many people it was censored. But like you said, doesn’t apply to tourists bringing their own phones with their own data plans.
If you are going into China with a foreign SIM (roaming) you will have uncensored internet.
Just be aware that uncensored doesn't necessarily mean unmonitored. Just to be perfectly clear.
For the most agencies it's enough to know who communicates with whom. They aren't even interested in the message itself.
Of course. I just want to make that abundantly clear that people shouldn't read "uncensored internet" to say "safe to do whatever on the internet there" before anyone gets themselves in trouble for edgy ideas.
Sometimes.
I found as long as they’re preinstalled before you go then you’re good. You can’t google search though and google maps is not accurate for directions. It’s mostly websites blocked and using a vpn on any hotel WiFi doesn’t work.
Google Maps is absolutely useless
In many but not all cases, apps can work if they're already logged in and set up.
With Whatsapp specifically, it's usually the login that's blocked, not the messages etc. You might find that some parts of it work and others don't, depending on what servers they talk to and which protocols they use etc. You might find it doesn't work after restarting your phone or that it stops working after an app update.
Generally (but not always) the GFW blocks DNS lookups so often if the IP of a server is cached in short-term memory on a device, it can still use it but when you reboot or close a browser/app, you lose the cached IP and the lookup fails and it's blocked again.
The most obvious symptom of this is if you try to access one site like say google or wikipedia and find that you get back an IP address belonging to Facebook and then that IP is blocked. For some reason, maybe it was just the first block, a lot of blocked sites get resolved as Facebook.
Nobody cares. In fact, I'm using reddit and youtube and it works faster than the internet in my home country even with a VPN. Even when I was staying at my wife's farm in rural Anhui.
Most Chinese people don't use the apps you mentioned because:
They don't know anyone on them (FB/Instagram/Whatsapp), they don't have much Chinese content (Twitter/Youtube), they aren't relevant for life in China (Google Maps / Yelp / Twitter / Reddit ). Everything else there's a Chinese alternative that's cheaper and takes payments from Chinese payment systems Unionpay/WeChat/Alipay.
You'll find plenty of Chinese people in China on Reddit/other apps, but not even close to a significant amount. You're more likely to find people in Sweden using Weibo.
if you google "my location," you'll notice you're not in China because you're roaming with a foreign sim.
The internet won’t work at all or very slowly on internet sweeping day the 35th of May every year
If OP is on an iPhone isn’t there iCloud private relay enabled by default? I notice when I’m outside the US on an international plan that’s usually turned on and defaults my location to somewhere in the US if I search what is my IP.
They get SIMs from another country and use them. I have some colleagues I talk to who do this in China.
I believe Whatsapp is not banned, at least I didn't have any issues using it in January. No VPN or foreign SIM.
It's definitely not like "most apps are banned".
The Great Firewall has a lot of holes in it. Sometimes something may work, and then a hole gets plugged, and then it won't.
A long time ago I went for a visit. At first everything worked, went to dinner, came back, everything blocked.
Turned on VPN, everything worked again. Went to sleep, woke up, everything blocked again. Emailed my VPN's customer support, was told that there's nothing they can do about it.
Not sure if it's true or not, someone told me, VPN service from a server in China doesn't actually give you privacy the way we think of VPN. If you can access blocked apps using the VPN service, that means China gov has access to those VPN servers and you are most likely monitored.
Not you specifically, but they'll be monitoring for keywords. So don't try to look up forbidden stuff even while in VPN, like you know, adult only services by a local provider.
If you have a phone bought outside of China you’re fine. App bans are only for locals
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If you are using an international data plan you’ll be able to access everything just fine. I was also surprised that I had no issues when I first got there. Keep in mind that Google maps might not be that accurate though, since Google doesn’t bother updating their China stuff anymore.
You won’t get into trouble, China doesn’t care if tourists or even some citizens can access western apps. They are more interested in creating Chinese alternative apps and making the barrier for entry on blocked things high enough that their citizens basically say “why would I bother going through the effort of getting through the firewall when chinas version of this app works just fine?”