I live in China since 2011 and tried several VPN services, but if it comes to secure, reliable and fast VPN which works in China you eventually will stick to Astrill after you once gave it a shot.
The use of several VPN services is forbidden by law in China. The access to the website www.astrill.com is blocked and so Astrill was forced to redirect over the website www.getastrill.com. Nowadays the website www.astrill-china.com is available. Unfortunately you need to connect your mobile phone to an app store (both Apple and Android) in a region with low access restrictions to download your VPN client. Please feel free to consult Astrill (chat option on their website) to get support on that issue.
It seems a paradox, but Astrill offers payment with UnionPay, Alipay und Wechatpay with registered accounts. Since this contradicts the idea of anonymization, I recommend paying with crypto currencies. Astrill supports payment with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Monero, Dash and many more.
What you get is a VPN client
- for one computer and one mobile phone at the same time.
- That is only 8.33 USD per month (yearly payment)
- works with both China Telekom, China Unicom and with China Mobile anyway.
The settings using OpenVPN usually works fine, for more security and anonymity in China choose stealth mode extra.
Pro-Tip: Choose a server near you and not one not near the place you guess a website or service is located you want to reach. Also, it makes no sense to lead your traffic near the country you‘re from and back to you. In China, I have very good experiences connecting with Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and UK via Taiwan.
Even if you’re not in a country with content censorship and tight access restrictions a secure VPN is a good idea. All your connections are encrypted which means within the VPN nobody can easily access the data you are transferring when one has access to the infrastructure for telecommunication (man-in-the-middle-attack).
To make a long story short: Choose Astrill as your VPN-Service – fast, reliable, works.