Hi, I am in China. I use Astrill to connect to sites that are otherwise unavailable. Since yesterday, Astrill is not working. Many Astrill users in China complained.

Question: is it possible for the Chinese Govt. to permanently block VPN services?

Can you recommend, suggest, a way around this which does not involve leaving China?

Would Tor browser do the job for you? (Unrelated to your problem but I spent 2 years in China, Guangzhou, 1999-2001).
jdk

I think it's possible. China started taking steps in this direction a little over a year ago, perhaps even before that.

No. While I certainly don't agree with China's policies concerning web access and usage, I'm not going to advise anyone on how to break their laws. The only advice I could give you on that is not an option for you.

Regards...

Yeah, be very careful not to break any laws, nor to draw undue public attention to yourself ... and then, "wait for the times to change, as they inevitably must."

I would doubt that any government would attempt to "shut-off VPN," because so much very-legitimate business (and government, for that matter ...) relies upon "secure communication over an insecure Internet," but ... well ... government officials are government officials.

In any case, I don't think that I would subsequently use "tor," nor anything else that might be seen as circumventing what some official might have done. Instead, "keep your nose clean and try to find out why." Since you aren't (of course ...) doing anything illegal and have nothing to hide, don't behave "suspiciously."

Haha, the times they are a changin'! Rate of Change: Inversely proportional to the amount of money in the Bank of China.

<rant>As far as breaking the law is concerned, you would have to tell me which law that was exactly. Unless its The Blanket Law: Everything is illegal unless otherwise stated, penalty anything we feel like.</rant>

Hi...

Take a look at the article, "Legislative basis," here.

Regards...

I use a VPS with openvpn server installed in a nearby country. I also found with this setup over time it got harder and harder to connect to my vpn server, presumable something was interfering with handshaking ...

I then setup a obfuscation proxy so now my VPN always connects, but at certain times during the day the speed can be very slow. This problem is caused by limited bandwidth between this country and it's neighbours, well that is what some told me. In any case the VPN works very well most of the time, but streaming video at peak evening viewing time can be a problem sometimes.

You can assume that some agency in China has full control over every 1 and 0 going over it's boarders. You don't think they are buying massive supercomputers to play pong do you? It's for cracking.(inside and out) (and nuclear research and genetic models)....

Surprised that you got as far and as long as you did.

Is there a law??? Why are you using this stuff then?

Good news: Astrill is back, with a reduced number of servers, but it works as of this morning!

The struggle continues!

Can I do that? It is presumably illegal here, but I'd like to try! Got a link?