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I’m living in China and here’s my two cents:
You’d still be better off with China-specific VPN subscriptions.
- Yes they might get shutdown. But there are so many providers that you can get a new one at any moment.
- There’s no real risk using a VPN in China. My guess is like 10% of the population is using one. Only commercial VPN providers get caught.
- The GFW of China is using some traffic pattern detection technology, so your home VPN server might get blocked after a few days of use. You need to change the public IP of your router every few days to work around that.
- With a traditional VPN (e.g. OpenVPN), all your traffic is routed back to your home. This might prevent you from using the domestic version of many Chinese websites (e.g. Taobao, Alipay, Ctrip), since they’ll redirect automatically to the international version.
- The keywords of VPN software specially designed against GFW: clash, shadowsocks, v2ray, trojan. But their servers are not that simple to setup. (Client setup can be as easy as scanning a QR-code, though)
You’re going to have to do some learning to set a self-hosted system up properly.
And it may require some advanced knowledge to know what restrictions that the great firewall of China might have that you’d have to work around. Some of that might require having already testing things out, from China.
Oh, and if they detect that you are doing this, you might find yourself in serious hot water. At best perhaps deportation, or possible being imprisoned as a spy or dissident.
I cannot fathom what kind of job would motivate a US citizen to move to a country like China, even temporarily.
You could use dietpi on your raspberry pi, but I would recommend to use a mini pc like dell optiplex thin client. So you can have your own vpn server.
I would recommend to use PiVPN package it can automate OpenVPN or WireGuard Server and create easily your clients and qr codes for mobile devices.
Also you can add other services like AdguardHome or Pihole and filter nasty ads and telemetry if you prefer. A plus if you can add Unbound to make a recursive dns but that would be if you want just to add extra layers.
Just the VPN server is enough to get access to your home. I would add maybe ZeroTier as second option just to do ssh stuff. Just in case the main VPN can’t get access or you need to do some debug.
For this at your home, you should have a ipv4 address static or dynamic. If is the later you may need to use a DDNS. I would recommend to use the cloudflare service if you own a domain but also there are some free ddns.
In case your ISP is under a NAT that would be a bit problematic. In that case you can use IPV6 if you ISP supports it and use to connect to the exterior.
Alternatives are good like
- ZeroTier
- Tailscale
- Cloudflare Tunnel (zero trust)
- Netmaker
- Rent a VPS with public ipv4 and connect to your home.
For routers I would recommend to have an OpenWrt but is not necessary. Consider maybe to get a travel router like GL-iNet so you can add commercial vpn solutions and your vpn clients from Wireguard or OpenVPN.
Wireguard requeries more punch on the cpu so if you can get the mini pc would be great but also a raspberry pi 4 is enough.
Where I last worked, the policy was: don’t bring your primary devices to China, nor data. Set up new specific accounts for your activities, and then wipe and dispose of them when you return.
You can use a Firewalla (e.g. Purple) or a GL.iNet (e.g. Brume 2) as a WireGuard server at home.
For China, you can use another Firewalla or a GL.iNet again as a WireGuard client to connect to your server at home.
Setting up the home server is very easy, all you need to do is connect it (using its WAN port) to your router or switch and forward a port on the main router to your WireGuard server.
Connect and test with dnsleaktest.com
You should take your router with you into China (buying from there will most likely not have a VPN option). But I don’t know if that’s permitted or not.
A travel router like the Firewalla Purple might be handy. It supports VPNs. It can also rebroadcast Wi-Fi a short distance.
I use a couple of cheap mini routers from GL.iNet, one as the server (at home) and one as the client (which I travel with). You can use WireGuard or OpenVPN, the software comes preinstalled and is easy to set up. At home you also need to set up DDNS if you don’t have a static IP (and update your client VPN config file accordingly), and port forwarding on your router.
Just use satellite and be done for, no VPN needed, no government risk.
The Great Firewall of China is quite sophisticated. To get around it, you may need to use obfuscation techniques to disguise your VPN traffic as regular HTTPS traffic. Some VPN solutions, such as Shadowsocks, are specifically designed for this purpose. As previously mentioned, overlay networks such as Tailscale, Zerotier, or Netmaker would be a good bet for your needs as well.
Don’t ask on this sub as most ppl have no experience dealing with your case.Goto this sub for a start: https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbclub/
- OpenVPN, WireGuard, Tailscale Netmaker DOES NOT WORK IN CHINA, the GFW blocks them.
- Cloudflare tunnel works but not very well, high latency and unstable.
The only method for selfhosted I would recommend right now is https://getoutline.org/This is a selfhosted vpn using shadowsocks protocol that is not blocked by the GFW.
You would probably want to rent a vps in Asia (to get low latency) and set that as the vpn host.
P.S OutlineVPN is technically a proxy, however once you establish a connection you can tunnel everything through it.
These things can also happen in the US.
Chinese americans exist?? And we have family there lol?? Sorry for travelling to a country and visiting relatives that literally doesnt effect you at all
I would not suggest you to host a vpn AT HOME for using it in China as you woud probably get a 1s latency (1000ms) with lots of packet loss making it unusable.
You’re not going to get thrown in jail merely for using a VPN in the US
You might get arrested if you’re doing something that would be illegal even without a VPN.