In 2016, Facebook developed a censorship tool that could be applied to the mainstream social network while leaving some privacy for users. But Chinese regulators are reluctant to make contact, which was confirmed by the shutdown of WhatsApp in the summer and fall of 2017.
As Facebook actively improves its position in many parts of the world, China remains almost unreached, except for users browsing through a laptop VPN. The company has long believed that partial access to services, even with censorship, is better than no access, as it can connect people and provide access to knowledge that can help. But working with censors and a government known to be hostile to human rights defenders could lead Facebook to contradict some of its values or leave users vulnerable.
As a result, the Chinese government refused to contact and use any version of Facebook without full control over the data and personal correspondence of users, and representatives of the social network did not agree to this.
How to access Facebook from China?
Available in some regions, Facebook can be a means of correspondence, but tight controls and the Golden Shield make this extremely inconvenient. For most users traveling to China on a business or leisure trip, the only solution today is a VPN. And despite the fact that VPN in China does not officially work either, you can use it. Users cannot download the Vpn app from China, but if you install a VPN for the browser or client before entering the country, there will be no problems, and all Facebook services will still be open and accessible.
Please note that international services should be used for full access. Anything that is offered as a free Chinese VPN will not work, and data security is out of the question. In the context of more and more frequent and complex VPN blocking in China, only top providers work, which provide users with uninterrupted access.
Steps
VPN
- StrongVPN
- ExpressVPN
- WiTopia
- BolehVPN
- 12VPN
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Make sure the VPN you choose works in China. Some of the biggest VPN servers were blocked by the Chinese government and are no longer available. Check the company you are registering with and read reviews of their online service.
- BestVPN.com is the site for the most up-to-date information on the most reliable VPN services currently available in China.
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Download the required program. Some VPN services like WiTopia will provide you with a VPN client that needs to be installed on your computer. Other services like StrongVPN will give you connection information that you can enter into the connection manager on your Windows computer or Mac.
- Ideally, you should download and install a VPN program before traveling to China. Most of the well-known VPN programs are blocked, preventing you from registering or downloading the client. Setting up a VPN outside of China will make it easier for you to contact support in case of problems.
- Some VPN services provide mobile applications that you can use on your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
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Connect to VPN. Start the client or enter the VPN information into your connection manager operating system... The VPN clients provided by these services are already configured and only need your login.
Go to Facebook. Once your VPN is connected, you can go to any blocked site that was previously denied access, as well as use any Internet program like Skype. You may notice that the connection speed will be slow, but this is normal due to the distance between you and the VPN service.
Through proxy servers
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Find the VPN service that suits your needs. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is an encrypted connection to a remote server that allows you to access the Internet by bypassing restrictive firewalls. VPN affects all your traffic, which means Skype and other messaging services will also not be blocked by firewalls. VPN is not free, but besides the annual payment, you can choose a monthly subscription, which is very convenient for tourists. Below is a list of the most popular VPN services:
Why Facebook was banned in China
The Chinese government prefers to control the information that citizens get access to, and requires companies to provide them with the ability to censor the news feed and view user correspondence. Since Facebook (like other corporations) does not agree to this, the Chinese authorities turned off access to it back in 2009.
If you try to access a website or open an application while connected through a Chinese ISP or mobile operator, automatic blocking will work. If you turn on VPN on your phone or laptop, the traffic will pass through the provider's channel and it will be impossible to track it, which means that the user will not be able to access it. As long as you are connected to a VPN, no one will control your traffic and restrict access to information.
VPN for Facebook in China is used not only by guests of the country, but also by local businessmen, as they conduct sales through it, communicate with partners from other countries.
How to choose a VPN for Facebook
Until recently, there were many providers, but after the blockages in 2017, there are not many reliable services left in China. Those who have gone on, however, offer a wide variety of options. In 2018, you can access Facebook from China from any of your devices: iPhone and Android mobile phone, tablets, laptops, computers.
There is an option to install a VPN client on the device or use a browser extension if you only need the web version of Facebook and the messenger.
Express VPN for Facebook
The choice of those for whom it is important to be in touch in any region, from any device. It is the world leader in the field of VPN, and although its services are more expensive than others, users often choose it for its exceptional reliability and the highest information transfer speed.
Check out also the features and offers of VPN providers Ivacy and - they work pretty well in China, but often applications have to be manually configured. But their prices, as a rule, are lower, and the functions are very interesting.
How to access Facebook in China from your phone?
It's easier with laptops, where you can try to connect via a browser extension. But viewing the feed and using the messenger from the smartphone screen is not so convenient, so you need to install a VPN client that will manage the traffic. Most VPN services offer traffic sharing: the Facebook app in China will run through the VPN, while others will be bypassed to keep things going.
If you find free service, which promises access to Facebook in China, download it additionally and paid, if you don't need it, you will get your money back.
FAQ
Is there an analogue of Facebook in China?
In a way, the student social network RenRen acts as an analogue, but there you can only contact students. The common Chinese social network with messenger is WeChat, but all messages are monitored, and there will be no connection with your friends.Is there Facebook in China?
Yes, but only through a VPN connection. Neither service nor messenger will open without a VPN. Everything works with a VPN, and millions of visitors and locals have been using such services for almost 10 years.Where to download VPN for Facebook in China?
The safest way to do this is from the official sites, you can go to them from our portal. But it is more important not where, but when - everything needs to be done before entering the country, then it will be much more difficult, since you will need a VPN connection to download a VPN client. Solvable, but if you think about it in advance, it will be easier.Block IP addresses associated with Telegram, which was blocked in Russia for refusing to provide encryption keys to the authorities. Millions of entries have been made to the register of banned sites. The first to be unloaded were the network addresses of Amazon and Google. Later, users noticed problems with the Odnoklassniki social network, the Viber messenger and the Spotify streaming service. For technical reasons, ATMs of different banks do not work from time to time. At the same time, Roskomnadzor does not consider this damage significant.
The most famous example of Internet blocking is the Great Firewall of China. Since the 2000s, access to Facebook, Google, YouTube and other well-known resources has been closed in the country. The official reason is the fight against extremism. We spoke with Russians from China about how they live in a country with limited internet access.
The beginning of the problems
Alexander Maltsev
Chief Editor online editions about China "Magazeta"
I ended up in China almost 20 years ago, in 1999. And at that time with a foreign internet big problems was not, it just took a very long time to open everything, hung in comparison with Chinese sites. And even now, while speeds have changed since then, foreign Internet is much slower than Chinese. Chinese videos load many times faster than foreign videos, even unblocked ones.
In the early 2000s, there was news about the blocking of popular resources: Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook. And of course, for foreigners living in China, this came as an unpleasant surprise. Other sites were also blocked - for example, with opposition political topics. Then online proxies began to gain popularity, where it was possible to drive in the site address, and it opened in a separate frame. Finally, there was a VPN. VPN in China is a must-have tool that almost every expat living here and some Chinese people have.
How does blocking work?
Now in China, almost all major foreign social networks and information resources that are not accountable to the Chinese authorities are blocked. Twitter, Facebook - wherever you poke, everything is blocked. Many messengers are blocked, for example WhatsApp and Telegram. When a resource is blocked, the user is not warned in any way that this site is blocked. The site simply doesn't respond, and the browser throws an error. Experimentally or on special sites, you can check whether it is not available only from you or throughout China. Naturally, this causes great discomfort, especially for foreigners.
As for the indigenous population of China, the restriction for the use of foreign sites is not so much in blocking as in the language barrier. Much fewer Chinese know English compared to the same Russia. On the other hand, in China its own alternatives appeared very quickly: instead of Wikipedia there are several other similar encyclopedias, the largest of them is Baidu, instead of Facebook there are many different social networks - for example, Renren.com, instead of Twitter - Weibo, instead of the messenger - WeChat. By the way, the latter is a super application that combines a payment system, a social network with a friend feed and communication.
Therefore, the Chinese themselves are not very tormented by the lack of direct access to foreign sites. For those who want to bypass blockages, this is not difficult. In online stores and marketplaces, such as Taobao, you can type in the words "VPN" or 翻墙 ("fan qiang") in the search for goods, which translates as "to get over the wall." There are many all sorts of applications with VPN and proxy for phone and desktop, allowing you to quickly and cheaply bypass all obstacles.
Living with a VPN
Since I am a foreigner myself in China and work on the Internet, I use a VPN. It practically does not turn off - only in those cases when I need, for example, to use Chinese resources, because with the VPN turned on, Chinese resources are bad and slow, and sometimes they do not open at all. You won't be able to watch a video on a Chinese hosting with a VPN. We also use local counterparts: even foreigners actively use WeChat as a messenger and means of payment.
Telegram, however, is not universally banned in China. It all very much depends on the provider and the region. For some, it does not work at all, for some, only push notifications work, for others, only messages are visible, but pictures do not, for others everything works without problems. By experience, we have noticed that Telegram works better when it is tied to a Russian mobile number.
WeChat has a huge number of channels for expats living and working in China, there, of course, discussions are popular about which VPN is the best, how to bypass blocking more conveniently. Therefore, foreigners quickly find ways to bypass the Great Firewall of China.
Golden Shield rules
Daria Baranikhina
The Chinese Internet is, in principle, not the fastest thing. As far as I know, it is in the second hundred in the ranking of countries in terms of Internet speed. Even if you use sites on Chinese hosting, they will work much slower than, for example, in neighboring Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
And the main feature that primarily affects foreigners is blocking. The state program, which constantly monitors and blocks more and more resources, is called the "Golden Shield". In English it sounds like Great Firewall. But it is important to understand that this is not a prohibition, but a blocking. If this were a ban, we would not have the right to use blocked sites. Now we are simply limited by the government in using the site, but in no way limited in ways of circumvention. There are no penalties for this. Therefore, we freely buy VPN services and VPN accounts and use the sites that we need.
Many resources are blocked: from Google and its services (Calendar, Maps, Gmail) to social Facebook networks, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp messenger. There are resources that open in China, but with limited functionality or blocked materials. For example, if we want to find information about June 4, 1989 in Wikipedia, we will be thrown out of the page. This is an event that claimed the lives of more than a hundred students who rallied in the main square of Beijing. China by hook or by crook is trying to forget about this event. There is even a version that it was for this reason that it was blocked by Google many years ago.
Also, the rules of the "Golden Shield" apply to Chinese sites. They are not allowed to link to foreign sources without the express permission of the Chinese authorities or a special license.
Reasons for blocking
The main version of Facebook blocking is anti-Chinese sentiment in some groups, many anti-communist groups have started organizing offline meetings. Another reason was the database of Chinese users, which was located outside of China, which did not suit the authorities. Facebook did not agree to transfer the data and was blocked. Another story is from Instagram, which was blocked not too long ago, in 2014. A few days earlier, the "umbrella revolution" had begun in Hong Kong, with local residents taking to the streets after being informed of a new electoral reform. Hong Kongers posted videos and photos to Instagram right from the scene. WhatsApp and Viber are currently working to send text messages. Voice messages, pictures and videos are not supported.
VPN is the only way to bypass blocking. Services are paid if you need stability guarantees. The market leaders have a standard price of $ 60 for six months.
WeChat as a replacement for everything
I moved to China in 2012. Then only YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were blocked. Even Google, which was blocked in 2010, still gave access to services like Gmail. Considering that the post office worked, and I did not use social networks very actively, I will not say that I experienced at least some discomfort when I arrived in China. The discomfort began later, when they began to block messengers and slow down the speed. For example, the same "Yandex" - it is not blocked, but it works much slower than a regular Chinese site. There are decent Chinese alternatives to search engines, but I and my foreign friends have no particular desire to use them when they need information in English or Russian.
But a huge bow to the Chinese for the messenger. WeChat is something you can't live without in China, and something that is sorely lacking abroad. WeChat combines the best of messenger, social media and apps with video and audio calls. In recent years, WeChat has become a way to pay for any service in China. WeChat Pay works in mountains, forests and small villages. As a guide, I travel a lot, and I have not yet had a single case that I could not pay with a WeChat wallet. The app is irreplaceable and constantly evolving. Probably, this is an example when the Chinese analogue is ahead of the blocked messengers in terms of functions and convenience. The only problem is that relatives, friends and colleagues from Russia do not sit on WeChat. There is an inconvenience: WeChat does not work when VPN is on. If we want to stay in touch with the outside world, then we will not be able to log into WeChat. And vice versa. You need to constantly switch.
Get on Instagram
Marina Yushchenko
English teacher
In China, Internet censorship is blocking some sites, I will tell you about the problems that I encountered on my own experience. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, services on the Google platform, YouTube and others do not work. I was without Instagram for the first two days after my arrival, and since I can't imagine my life without it, I quickly learned from my compatriots how to solve this problem. Just downloaded free apps v App Store, first it was Betternet, then VPN Master - I still use it.
For the phone, it is enough to download the application and turn it on before entering the forbidden applications. But still, even with a VPN, the speed is very low, but thanks for that too. For a laptop, you need a router with a VPN, I did not bother with this, but compatriots often buy. If you want to watch a movie at home, some online movie sites may not be available either.
Before arriving, I changed my Android LG to an iPhone, and this was not at all because I knew that everything was blocked here, but because I wanted to take high-quality photos, but I am happy with this decision. The guys who come to Google with androids generally buy new phones to solve the problem of bypassing locks.
"Are you on Facebook?" - such a phrase will cause a violent reaction from the Chinese, and sometimes he simply will not understand you, since access to such popular social networks in the West as Facebook, Twitter and others is blocked. It has its own social networks, with an audience of tens of millions of users. So the Chinese are no exception, and they also like, repost and upload photos of their food to the network.
- As of January 2015, the PRC (excluding Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) had 642 million users, or 21.4% of the world.
- Chinese Internet users have 629 million social media accounts (47% of the Chinese population - there is still room to grow)
- China also accounts for a third of all users mobile internet: China is a country of mobile phones - already now they account for 41 percent of the total population of China
7 most popular social services in China:
1. Qzone
The social network Qzone is the brainchild of the Internet company Tencent. She is third social network in the world by the number of users (only Facebook and Youtube). As of the beginning of 2014, 625 million people were registered on the network.
Created in 2005, it primarily allows users to write their own blogs, create online diaries, watch videos, listen to music and post photos. Fortunately for marketers, this is where all well-known brands can promote their products and services through so-called fan pages.
In Qzone, you can change the design to your liking. But only basic functions in Qzone are free, and all additional services are provided on a paid basis. To purchase such services, you need to obtain the status of "Yellow Diamond" - a kind of premium subscription.
Registration in Qzone
Qzone's 150 million users update their personal page at least once a month.
2.
As an instant messaging service, similar to ICQ, QQ offers versatile web communication features: instant messaging, voice and video chat, file sharing with other users, and machine translation service.
The program was introduced in 1999 by Tencent and is the great-grandfather of Chinese social media. Since then, it has improved to include features such as apps, music, online shopping, and microblogging. According to official data from Tencent, the number of active users of this service is about 300 million people. To stay “on trend,” the Chinese company has also introduced Mobile QQ, an application designed for use on mobile platforms. After its appearance on mobile platforms, the QQ Wallet mobile payment service became available, allowing users to pay for online purchases. In addition to the main Chinese version of the program, there is an English version - QQ International.
QQ is not used for cold selling, but the vast majority of commercial sites have a button that allows you to contact a consultant or sales manager using QQ.
Registration in QQ
If you are particularly fluent in Chinese, then you can safely change the language to English, which will greatly simplify the registration process. In addition, you have a choice: register with mobile phone or by email
