Can tourists or other travellers in China get in trouble for using a VPN or other method to get around the "Great Firewall"?

12/30/2013 11:45:47 AM

Living in China 10+ years I can tell you with confidence that you will not get into trouble for using a VPN. Chinese people themselves also don’t get into trouble for using one. (Promoting or sharing a VPN is a different matter obviously.)

I wouldn’t waste my time finding actual laws, for two reasons:

  1. Laws in China are interpreted differently than in the west. “Common sense” has a very strong influence in Chinese courts whereas western courts tend to take the letter of the law more literally. Unless you’re a Chinese lawyer you’re likely to misinterpret things. For examples of this, please see this post on China Law Blog.

  2. We all break laws in our own country all the time. This is so common we don’t even realise this anymore. Just because there’s a law prohibiting something doesn’t mean it’s enforced under all circumstances. With the exception of speed traps to supplement the sheriff’s income, most laws are enforced only when they make sense.

12/30/2013 8:58:38 AM

Similar to one of your last questions regarding China, asking for concrete non-chinese documentation on Chinese regulations is in most cases not answerable. Why?

  • Chinese officials are not known for transparency, rather the opposite. A lot of things, while visible at the surface through actions like stickers, blocked websites etc are extremely hard to find details about.
  • Regional and National law often contradict each other. Each issue will have to be looked at for a specific place where you are at.
  • Actual effectiveness of a law is often not equivalent with the dates a law is supposed to become active. Chinese officials often pass laws that become active within 1-2 months, and only deal with the issues that arise from poor law design once it is supposed to be active by postponing it, changing it or canceling it right away.

Regarding the issue at hand, there is no documentation available from officials as far as I know, and to estimate what might happen, one has to look at what the firewall is trying to do in the first place:

The firewall is mainly directed against local Chinese people and people who want to distribute news to the masses that could instigate revolts or unrest in any larger size.
English-language news in China are often more at ease to report on sensitive issues than the Chinese language edition of the same newspaper, just because the people who speak English well enough to read newspapers with ease are well enough informed already anyhow through other means. Social networks where people might be rallied to protest or such are the real target of the firewall and censorship after all.

Foreign companies are usually able to circumvent the firewall with their own installations of networks, including network companies. For example, corporate VPNs that routes all employee communication through internet connections abroad still work fine in China. On top of that, if you have a Hong Kong cellphone from “3 (Hutchinson)”, you can browse Facebook and anything else on your phone in China – without any hacks, proxies or VPNs.

That is why, there is no risk at all for you as a foreigner to use a VPN, foreign roaming or company network to circumvent the firewall. The Government simply does not care about you. Would you as a security expert start using such technology to give access to a broader audience in any way and do so over a longer time, you will be in trouble if caught of course.

So to come back to your question “Where can you read about it”? You cannot, to my knowledge find a comprehensive source that will tell you the current issues foreigners have circumventing the firewall, other than advertisers for VPN services and scattered news reports about the cat & mouse hunt the government is doing to plug holes in their systems and prevent companies from offering such services.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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