Don't make any connection to your home server, period.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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At first, it will probably work. But you will likely lose access after a few days and your servers will be scanned for exploits, so make sure your shit it up to date.
Source: hosted an XMPP server which was summarily banned after 2 days of access from China and then probed/attacked repeatedly until I took it offline.
almost like going to China is a mistake...
Mobile roaming worked but not while connected to hotel Wi-Fi. I also got a VPN before I went to China, routed through Japan. It was slow as shit.
Bringing non-disposable technology to China is a mistake in most circumstances.
I would not try to access a server from China. Can't you let someone else take care of the machine in the meantime? It's always a good idea to have some backup admin just in case.
I wouldn't access anything nor would I take any tech with you.
Don't risk it
What are the risks, if you aren't intending on doing anything illegal?
They can load in spyware that follows you outside the country. Also the whole "if you aren't intending to do anything illegal" bit really reads like all the piece of shit bootlicking conservatives after George Floyd.
They can't do that unless they take your devices, gain admin access and install stuff onto it. You don't just get spyware installed your phone simply by entering a country.
Also the whole "if you aren't intending to do anything illegal" bit really reads like all the piece of shit bootlicking conservatives after George Floyd.
Except that is a whole different context. The argument doesn't work if you're a citizen of a country and granting your government more and more powers. It would apply maybe if you were a Chinese citizen. OP isn't talking about moving to China or installing a similar government in their home country. They are going on holiday. You can behave yourself and cooperate with their requirements for a few weeks. If you are really against a country having powers to check your phone and devices and such as a matter of principle, not because you've got anything to hide, then don't go.
George Floyd was an American citizen murdered in his own country by the powers that were supposed to protect him. Big difference.
Although I did take precautions myself, such as deleting my memes/downloads folder just in case I saved anything that could be offensive. But it didn't matter because they didn't check my phone anyway for simply being there.
China itself cares the most about public disorder and foreign influence. As long as you aren't intending on causing foreign interference in how they do things and are just going for purposes of tourism/adventure/meeting people, then you'll be absolutely fine. They don't really care enough about you to give you special treatment unless you are seen as a threat like that.
People have said that is exactly what happens. Some had full phone scan, other requirement is installing a china app and keeping it on your phone for your stay
I have never heard of that happening. surely that'll take ages if they had to stick an app on every foreigner's phone
Foreigners looking to travel through China's Xinjiang
That's only for Xinjiang.
Foreigners will most likely have Alipay at least if you want to pay for stuff and use ride share.
True, although you can just sandbox it and refuse to give it permissions.
You have no idea how small these snooping apps can be. Like less than a megabyte and all your traffic goes through a server controlled by the pla and logs everything in and out of your phone whether your on mobile or Wi-Fi.
Yeah but the process of taking a phone, getting the unlock code, installing it, etc.
Lol you just flew half way around the world to get there and now you're going to not give them your code. And yeah, they probably don't need it anyways.
"bUt YiDdIsH, wHy NoT sNeAk YoUr DeVicE iN¿"
You go ahead and try that, let us know how it works out for you if you make it back.
Simple solution to every other dumb shit question you're going to ask; just bring a fucking burner device not logged into anything!
Jesus, I got this fence post out in my yard if you wanna continue this non argument.
China isn't exactly know for rule of law. They could simply decide you are a criminal. When traveling international it is better to play it safe.
If you really need a service I would either bring a disk drive with you or setup limited remote access for yourself that has minimal access. Remember they can force you to hand over things like passwords.
Doesn't the USA do the exact same thing?
I wouldn't recommend travelling to the USA either
I unironically think the USA's security might be worse than China. Everyone in China was quite friendly and patient.
Competent, too, I bet.
Yep. Pretty efficient most of the time
It isn't exactly the same thing but border security can do just about anything.
They can, but they probably won't in all likelihood. You could get in a car accident on the way to the airport. Your aeroplane could also crash.
*What aren't
You have to install an app on your phone and keep it their during your visit. Some people said they had a full phone scan done on entry. Don't bring your regular phone bring a burner and don't login to any of your accounts
You don't. I went to China a few weeks ago and my phone was never of any suspicion or brought into question.
It depends. Very much. And this is the main problem: There isn't "one" solution, you will need a few.
The thing with the PRC is: Their great firewall isn't "one big uniform block". It's fairly "variable".
For example: In Beijing,even 10 years ago, I could access google maps and Facebook without any issues(back then highly blocked) as long as my mobile phone was roaming. The second I was on wifi of course it was blocked. But even the cheapo VPN my colleague had did work out fine. Until the day the police started to prepare for the party convention - then suddenly my colleague couldn't get out, neither could I with our company wifi and even my carefully crafted wire guard over HTTPs didn't work - unless I was in the wifi of the hotel or our host company. There it did. Party congress over? Back to normal operations.
If you travel through the country you will find that in one place solution A works, in another solution B. Generally the more rural (or closer to Tibet/Xinjiang/Myanmar) you get, the more restrictive it seems to be.
Personally I would simply get there different commercial VPNs to make sure you have a choice to get out at all - there are various ones with a good PRC reputation. Most providers have trials as well. And then double tunnel through that if you can't directly reach your usual VPN at home
tailscale worked some times, but seemed to depend on the location of the moon relative to the air speed of a nearby sparrow and it was really slow.
Zerotier is similiar - works sometimes but China's firewall is constantly changing which ports/protocols it blocks, so setup a wireguard server on port 443 as backup (looks like normal https traffic) and test both before you go.
Look into shadowsocks, or just normal vpn.
Pandafan was quite reliable for me. You might also be able to diy with hk, sg or sk vps instances, but it was a lot of work and a misconfiguration will cut you off.
Normal VPN doesn't work because they don't mask themselves. Even Tor bridges don't work because they are blocked.
Shadowsocks is like 2018 advice, go directly to xray and forget about legacy software
Yes, xray is better. Forgot about that. I think there had been a couple newer ones.
The thing with gfw circumvention is that even older approaches work surprisingly often, as detection methods change and often detection depends on the amount of suspicious traffic. I had most success with a more conventional setup on a vps, but that was more for testing out stuff. Found commericial providers to be more reliable.
VPNs work surprisingly often from what others tell me. They only block these occasionally. I think astrill and express often work. Just know that the ones that work, probably have chinese govt access.
Yes, tor never works.
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As another user posted, how strict the firewall is depends on where you are (and if there are any special events). I heard that Wireguard doesn't work because of deep packet inspeciton, but I was able to use Tailscale to my home network without problems when I was there last year. I also set up a xray vless-reality proxy on a VPS and Outline servers on Google cloud and those worked too.
But the easiest method is to buy an HK eSIM for roaming (I used 3HK). I bought a month of LetsVPN but they booted me from the service for some random reason, so I changed to Mullvad which also worked too.
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