Internet, SIM cards and apps in China

Connectivity is the first practical decision of a China trip, and it is made before you fly rather than after you land. There are two separate questions here: how you get online, and whether that connection is filtered.

Never assume an eSIM is unfiltered. That one sentence prevents more trouble than anything else on this page.

eSIM or a physical tourist SIM

eSIM

An eSIM is installed before departure and activated on landing. It is the better choice for short trips and multi-country itineraries, and it is usually data-only — no local phone number. Airalo, Nomad, Holafly, Trip.com and China Mobile’s CMLink all sell them.

Physical prepaid SIM

China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom sell prepaid tourist SIMs at international airports and city outlets, and they require passport real-name registration at the point of sale. The advantage is a Chinese phone number, which matters more than it sounds: free Wi-Fi in cafés, malls and stations often authenticates by sending a text message to a Chinese number.

Free Wi-Fi

It is everywhere, and it is unreliable while you are moving. Plan as if it does not exist.

The routing question that decides everything

An eSIM routed through an international or Hong Kong carrier effectively bypasses the Great Firewall; Trip.com sells exactly this, marketed as “VPN included”. An eSIM running on a mainland operator does not.

Vendors contradict one another on this, and the difference is invisible in the marketing copy. Check the routing of the specific plan you are buying, and never assume.

One practical consequence of a data-only eSIM: no Chinese phone number, so free Wi-Fi that authenticates by SMS will not let you in. Screenshots and offline maps stop being optional and become your primary tools.

What is blocked, and what is not

Blocked without a VPN

Instagram · Facebook · X/Twitter · Snapchat · international TikTok · WhatsApp · Telegram · Signal · Messenger · all Google services (Search, Maps, Gmail, Drive, Translate, YouTube, Chrome sync) · Western Netflix · Spotify · many international news sites · Dropbox · much of Wikipedia · ChatGPT.

Google Translate and Google Maps are on that list, which is why the offline alternatives below matter.

If WhatsApp is how you travel

WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Messenger are all blocked, and this is the item travellers underestimate most, because it is not about their own browsing — it is about everyone at home being able to reach them. Tell people before you leave, agree on a channel that works, and expect to run your trip on WeChat, which works without a VPN and is what hotels, guides and drivers will use to contact you.

Some travellers object on privacy grounds to installing WeChat or Alipay at all. That is a legitimate position to hold, but it has a practical cost in China, so decide it deliberately before departure rather than discovering it at a ticket counter.

The apps that work perfectly well without a VPN

WeChat, Alipay, Didi, Amap, Baidu Maps, RedNote, Dianping, and the Chinese hotel and booking apps. Nothing about paying, riding or navigating requires a VPN.

Two of those deserve a note. Amap (Gaode) is the most foreigner-friendly map: an English interface, search by English name or pinyin (“Beijing Zoo” or “beijing dongwuyuan”), English voice navigation, live transit tracking, downloadable offline maps, and integrated ride-hailing across 50-plus providers, payable through Alipay or WeChat Pay bound to an international card. Didi has an English interface and is the largest ride-hailing platform, with the strictest driver vetting; Amap is often cheaper for the same trip because it aggregates providers.

For translation, Baidu Translate (200 languages, offline packs, photo and voice) and Youdao (107 languages, offline, AR camera, simultaneous interpreting) are the China-native picks, and Pleco is the offline dictionary standard. Google Translate needs a VPN, and its offline packs should be downloaded anyway.

VPNs: the legal position and the practical one

Legally, unauthorised VPNs are technically illegal in China; only government-approved providers are lawful. In practice, enforcement against foreign tourists on personal phones is rare, and prosecutions overwhelmingly target Chinese residents who publish or broadcast. One vendor cites fines of RMB 500–15,000, and those are not directed at tourists. The honest framing is a legal grey area with low practical risk for visitors — which is not the same thing as a guarantee.

Reliability is a separate problem. Deep Packet Inspection defeats standard OpenVPN and WireGuard, and most popular VPNs simply do not work. Reporting from 2025–2026 rates Astrill (StealthVPN) as the most consistent; ExpressVPN, Surfshark, NordVPN, ProtonVPN and PureVPN range from “mixed” to “unreliable”.

Two consequences follow:

• Install, log in and test before you fly. Provider websites are blocked, so you cannot download an app or buy a subscription from inside China.
• Restrictions tighten around major political events. Have a fallback — usually an internationally routed eSIM.

Install before you fly

Nothing on this list takes long at home, and everything on it is painful to arrange on arrival.

• Alipay — installed, account verified, card bound
• WeChat — installed, account verified, card bound
• A VPN you have actually tested, logged in, with the provider’s mirror-site address saved somewhere that works offline
• Amap or Baidu Maps, with offline maps downloaded
• Didi
• Offline translation — Pleco, Youdao, or Baidu Translate with the Chinese language packs downloaded
• Trip.com and 12306, for hotels and trains
• Screenshots of your hotel name and address in Chinese, your bookings, and your passport
• Insurance documents, saved offline rather than in a cloud folder you cannot reach

Then test the set-up the way you will actually use it: with mobile data and Wi-Fi off, open the VPN and try to load a blocked site. If it does not work before you fly, it will not work after you land.

Getting understood once you are there

The language problem is mostly an address problem. English proficiency in China is low and English signage thins out quickly once you leave the biggest cities, but almost every difficulty resolves to the same few tasks: giving a driver an address, reading a menu, and asking a price. Screenshot the Chinese characters for your hotel before you leave it in the morning, ask reception to write the address on a card, and search Chinese apps by the Chinese name rather than the English one. A printable taxi card is a common and effective low-tech fix.

If you are moving between cities next, the high-speed rail guide covers booking and station procedure, and the payments guide covers what to do when a foreign card will not bind.

Where we are unsure

The eSIM-versus-filtering question is a commercial minefield: vendors claim both that eSIMs bypass filtering and that they do not, and both can be true depending on the plan’s routing. The RMB 500–15,000 VPN fine range is a vendor figure, and there is no tourist-specific official statement on VPN legality at all. We have written both as the grey areas they are.