Not that this is a recommended solution, but VPNs work from inside of China.
I lived with some Chinese students while I was exchanging and basically they said most people that want out of the Fire wall can just VPN out with no repercussions expected. Not that it’s ideal, but some commenters seem to believe that people in China have no access to the outside world which just isn’t true.
Before the internet the USSR could censor effectively, but now it’s pretty hard with encryption being as good as it is.
Of course there are people in China that don’t know that VPNs exist, but I think it’s an important nuance to mention that many people are able to have an open online experience.
As well, I think the Chinese government has demonstrated multiple times during "sensitive times" in recent years that they can make commercial VPN services nonfunctional at the snap of a finger. If a commercial VPN service is working, it is because of the Chinese government's mercy, not because of the commercial VPN's technological ingenuity.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see commercial VPN providers advertising that they are the best or only VPN service to work in China. I remember one time I saw a viral Astrill ad floating around that said something to the effect: "We're happy that our VPN service is working great for our customers. But please don't post that your VPN service is working great. We work really hard to develop new technologies and get around the Chinese firewall, and if you keep bragging about it, the Chinese government could find out, it will make it harder for our services to work."
Super bad taste in my mouth. Come on, you know that the very first customers to download new clients are from the Chinese government working to figure out how to get it blocked. Hate this kind of disingenuous marketing.
edit: I will say that it is true that most commercial VPN services do seem to be used for most of the year and work well enough without consequences; the law seems to exist, but does not always get enforced. Would be interesting to see if China starts ratcheting up the fines over time.
Most, if not all of them, use fixed IP addresses which would be trivial to block regardless of what hip new crypto schemes they're running. Any customer can get the full server list too - worth it to a censor for $5.
The only real threat is something like Tor which is very aggressively and actively probed/blocked in China.
I lived with some Chinese students while I was exchanging and basically they said most people that want out of the Fire wall can just VPN out with no repercussions expected. Not that it’s ideal, but some commenters seem to believe that people in China have no access to the outside world which just isn’t true.
Before the internet the USSR could censor effectively, but now it’s pretty hard with encryption being as good as it is.
Of course there are people in China that don’t know that VPNs exist, but I think it’s an important nuance to mention that many people are able to have an open online experience.