this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I feel like I should say that a VPN isn't a magic bullet. Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic it's still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use. Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldn't surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that it'll either end up blocked or you'll end up in trouble.
How do you know this? I have friends living in China that states otherwise.
As far as I know there are specific legal provisions for foreigners living in China in regards to VPN use, so what might be true for your friends isn't necessarily true for a regular Chinese person.
Which is why Chinese users don't use standard VPNs, they use obfuscated proxies with protocols like Shadowsocks and V2Ray, which mask the tunneled traffic as innocuous HTTPS traffic.
That's a fair point, but what you are talking about isn't a "VPN", at least not as they're commonly known and understood. Please remember that my response was directed to a user whose comment boiled down to "Get a VPN, that will solve the problem." A regular VPN will absolutely not the solve the problem.
But using a VPN is not illegal in China… why would you even have to explain why you’re using one?
https://www.scmp.com/abacus/tech/article/3095201/man-punished-using-vpn-scale-chinas-great-firewall-and-watch-porn
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/vpn-punishments-05212020103537.html
Lmao South China Morning Post and Radio Free Asia are literally propaganda mouthpieces for the CIA
Fair enough.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-man-arrested-after-making-1-6-million-from-selling-vpn-services/
That one details several such cases and includes links to local coverage from Litchi News from one of them.
Then there's this showing that the CCP banned unregistered VPNs in 2017. It's partially why they prosecuted the people in the previous article.
https://www.neowin.net/news/china-will-block-vpn-access-for-individuals-companies-must-register-with-the-government/
If you don't like that then here's The Guardian with a separate incident:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/man-in-china-sentenced-to-five-years-jail-for-running-vpn
Seriously, I can find articles like that detailing different incidents in every major mainstream media source. So either all of them are lying to me -or- you are trying to gaslight me.
Guess which one I think is more probable?
The correct response to "you just posted propaganda" is not to try and find a source that says the exact same thing as the propaganda...
Like that's the moment you should stop and say to yourself "maybe I was lied to"
The correct response to someone claiming something is propaganda is to go find more sources for more and separate incidents. If you can find multiple sources showing that a situation has happened multiple times then it stops being "propaganda" and starts being information.
At this point I have a pile of independent sources documenting multiple different incidents that support my understanding of the situation. I'm still open to counter evidence but so far you haven't provided any.