Business VPNs are allowed. Otherwise doing business would be important. How genuinely secure they are who knows....

Business VPNs are allowed. Otherwise doing business would be impossible. How genuinely secure they are who knows....

Naturally big corporations will continue to use their own VPN setups to their foreign offices.

The state regulations specifically mentioned allowing purchase of leased lines from Chinese network operators for such purposes.

I haven't looked, but I doubt that these are affordable for companies smaller than MNCs.

And I think that is the reason why the authorities are still not preventing all VPN traffic (except for special occassions) even if they could.

You may well be right

@dolphin

Check out Taiwan if u plan to stay in Asia. Like night and day. And there are the mountains too :)

Can't argue with that. Also Malaysia. Very interesting country and huge overseas Chinese population.

I should stop posting because it’s not fair to leave and then spew bitterness about a place on a forum where everyone is still residing there.

VPNS are not the only issue. Place is a comedy of errors for me.

I can’t live without YouTube. it’s the dark ages to block such an important site on the internet. They can’t just block political videos?

Funny you mention Taiwan. I actually considered it. but political situation concerns me about that place.

I also looked into Thailand. Seems like a mess. Some expats who have been there for 10 years and married get denied visas. You need residency after a while.

@Dolphin: "They can’t just block political videos?"

It's difficult for computer algorithms to tell what videos contain politically (or otherwise) sensitive material, and what not.

So in practise it would require the website owner to comply with requests coming from Beijing to remove whatever content Beijing wants blocked, and that's quite unacceptable to them. They barely accept such requirements from their own governments.

If Google etc would accept Chinese requirements of allowing (Chinese) government control on their content, they wouldn't be blocked here to begin with.

Other alternative is to completely separate the websites into Chinese and foreign websites. This is how the (Chinese) company behind Douyin (in China) and TikTok (abroad) operates. The two services are completely separate, and no content can be directly shared between the two, and the foreign version is inaccessible from China and with Chinese SIM cards.

Bur what point would there be for Youtube (for example) to open a separate service just for China... They'd compete against similar Chinese platforms without having the benefit of huge foreign content.

@ Dolphin

Great.

Japan is another great option in Asia. I assume u teach English. Vietnam is great too, damn chaotic, but if u still youngish, Hanoi is great. Hot as hell in summer though. Rest of Asia falls in the so-so cathegory (except Yogyakarta, but I think thats no money for teaching). And stay far away from Borneo, its too hot and humid.

You will start to wean off the gutter oil already after first week.

japan has an interesting culture and they may loosen up their immigration policies because birth rates are low. but they are also a workaholic culture which i don't like.
liumingke, don't be afraid to make the change. good luck!