Does Proton VPN work in China?

Since 2019, the Chinese government has tried to block access to Proton VPN as part of a larger crackdown on Internet freedom.

The Chinese government works hard to control its citizens’ access to the Internet. The Great Firewall employs a vast system of technical tools, including DNS filtering, URL filtering, and deep packet inspection, that the Chinese government uses to prevent people in China from accessing foreign websites. The government also uses these tools to detect and block VPN servers.

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While we have some anecdotal evidence that our service does at least sometimes work in China, we cannot guarantee that Proton VPN will work in mainland China (it works in Hong Kong).

Tor is the most effective way for people in China to access blocked content. To bypass the Great Firewall, you will need to use a Tor bridge, or a special unlisted Tor server. Because they are unknown, the Chinese government cannot block their IP address. To evade deep pack inspection, Tor has created pluggable transports(new window) that mask Tor traffic, making it look like standard Internet traffic.

The Tor Project has a Tor bridge guide(new window) to help you set up a secure Tor connection.

Updated Sept. 18, 2019