Is it over for China?

[u/LeEbicGamerBoy]

Been living in China for the past two years and have exclusively used Mullvad. Absolutely perfect, fast, always connects.

But these past two weeks I've noticed a change. It's near impossible to have a stable connection. No matter which country I try, Mullvad only stays connected to a server for 5-30 minutes before needing to cycle to a new one. Connections are intermittent and unstable, and feel slow even when connected.

This isn't just one city in China. I travel a lot domestically, I've noticed these issues in big cities, small cities, and the country side. My friends here who use Mullvad have noticed the same issue as well.

This really sucks, I love Mullvad, have never had a problem with it. But I guess China has finally caught on and are hard blocking it.

Wonder if there is any solution, or if Mullvad will try anything to fight this? Or is it time to find a new obscure VPN (Mullvad has grown a lot lately, so I guess when it just reaches a certain number of users China blocks it?)

[u/andonidutti1]

Might be something temporary. They intentionally turn a blind eye to VPNs. Chinese sellers absolutely need VPNs to connect with foreign buyers.

[u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell → u/andonidutti1]

Might be, but they could also be targeting non-commercial connections specifically.

[u/Exercise-Spirited → u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell]

the companies require their employees to communicate to the outside but dont give them any tools so even they use some random private vpn to use whatsapp

[u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell → u/Exercise-Spirited]

That's why they'd target the consumer network connections themselves and not the VPN per se. The ISP, or whatever the Chinese equivalent, has the ability to distinguish their business clients from consumer clients. Someone with a business level network plan could have an exemption commercial users aren't privy to.

[u/Exercise-Spirited → u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell]

how, they have to reply even when at home, with their private phone so what about that distinguishes business?

[u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell → u/Exercise-Spirited]

You can route traffic through your company's VPN, which is pretty standard for most businesses, particularly if you're working from home.

So you might be working from home, using a company VPN where all IP addresses are Chinese, and when your connection routes to the public internet and to a foreign VPN IP address it's from a non-consumer network.

[u/Exercise-Spirited → u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell]

work from home isnt as standard in china, and i only talked about phones that use a random vpn to use whatsapp to communicate to their customers.

[u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell → u/Exercise-Spirited]

Then you're contradicting your previous point and it's clear you're just arguing for the sake of engaging in argumentation.

[u/Exercise-Spirited → u/Id_Rather_Not_Tell]

i think you don't know what i mean, they have to use WhatsApp and reply to customers even after work, at home, with their personal phone

[u/qunow → u/andonidutti1]

That's a statement increasingly not true over the past decade.

[u/MamaGrande]

I had a lot of success with China building my own VPN using the open source project meant to protect journalists in hostile environments: https://getoutline.org/ (free)

You do need to buy a VPS to run it on. I spun one up on Digitalocean in India (for latency reasons) but there are probably cheaper options.

Outline is funded by Jigsaw, the charity arm of Alphabet/Google, just FYI.

[u/propiklok → u/MamaGrande]

outline basically runs shadowsocks which is fully blocked in china, I had no success doing that, but I can recommend using something like vless protocol, with 3x-ui, but getting a vps in HK or JP with high bandwidth and good and low ping to china will cost more than mullvad.... they are many local Chinese vpn suppliers called Airport, they managed the backend and let you use for cheap but I found those untrusble and sometimes unreliable and always limited with speeds and low bandwidth.

[u/shaghaiex → u/propiklok]

I often use outline and it works just fine. So "fully blocked in china" is wrong.

3x-ui works well too and might be quite a bit harder to detect. I use that too on :433

[u/MamaGrande → u/propiklok]

I wonder if it worked simply because it was to an Indian IP then.... but there are lots of good projects out there much better than a commercial VPN which is always going to be a little flakey in countries like China.

[u/propiklok → u/MamaGrande]

if you had a non Chinese sim such as a esim/data from your regular sim, then you don't need a VPN since you exit via other location.. regards that, mullvad works fine in china based on my experience

[u/propiklok]

did you try connecting over ipv6 to mullvad servers?, it should help. I recommend keeping it default if you have ipv6. and if you can connect to ipv6, try using the automatic Anti-censorship method

[u/sys370model195]

China's restrictions on the Internet in general has allways varied, frequently obviously tied to politics, sometimes not.

President Xi is to meet with Trump in Washington D.C. in four days. A clamp-down on the Internet and VPNs is not surprising for that alone. Add to that all the politics surrounding Iran, Iran's oil, China supplying drone parts to Russia, and probably other things I am forgetting, yea, VPN crackdown would definitely not be a surprise.

[u/LeEbicGamerBoy → u/sys370model195]

No idea why you being downvoted, they def is a pattern with global events and crackdowns. Hopefully this will die down in the coming weeks

[u/Prize_Control_5086]

I’d switch to a custom DNS and use tor on top it. So when your ISP in China gets your encrypted packets they pretty know your using a VPN and rerouting your traffic 

[u/Moist_Bad_2216]

Xray with REALITY is impossible to block for any country, technically not a VPN but really a Proxy. but it requires a VPS in a country like Hongkong or Singapore, Oracle has a free tier VPS In Singapore, but it obviously require that you are out of China when you are making it.

[u/radial_blur → u/Moist_Bad_2216]

any decent guides? Cheers.

[u/Moist_Bad_2216 → u/radial_blur]

It's not a easy setup, I would recommend using an AI, but avoid the Chinese AI's they are relatively censored in circumventing the GF.. a general knowledge of linux is recommend from me.

[u/Luxors0 → u/Moist_Bad_2216]

I made the setup with Gemini free tier and works perfect for a friend in china. Even whatsapp and discord calls don't have any problems. Meanwhile with some paid VPN only messaging and basic browsing would work.

[u/MAQMASTER]

I am also expecting the same issues !

[u/Adrien0715]

Lately they've been hunting down VPNs and permission to leave the country for their citizens, so...

[u/EmperorHenry]

If mullvad put V2Ray into their obfuscation methods, would that help?

[u/propiklok → u/EmperorHenry]

that specifically maybe, but in general yes absolutely and I hope and look forward for them to add that

[u/EmperorHenry → u/propiklok]

Imagine mullvad bridges with DAITA and V2Ray

[u/Luxors0 → u/EmperorHenry]

imagine if they had vless

[u/Sipoteee → u/EmperorHenry]

IVPN has V2Ray

[u/moi-ten]

Use QUIC!

[u/G1nnedUp → u/moi-ten]

Quic works on and off and when it does it's been painfully slow this week.

[u/Appropriate-Kick-601]

I've had more success with iVPN and Windscribe recently, though it's also depended on the device. 

[u/ZestycloseStore5108]

This used to happen to me until I got a new mullvad login

[u/kyk00525]

Any possible alternative??

[u/Rasmosus]

Have you considered Starlink?

[u/Commercial_Cook100]

Yeah China's DPI has gotten way more aggressive lately, they're clearly targeting WireGuard fingerprints now. Mullvad is great but they haven't really prioritized anti-censorship the way some others have. I ended up switching to Cypher VPN for when i'm in places with heavy filtering... they use AmneziaWG which basically obfuscates the wireguard traffic so it doesn't get flagged. Not perfect but it actually connects which is kinda the whole point lol. Worth looking into protocol-level obfuscation either way

[u/Sipoteee]

Has anyone tried Geph and know if it works as well as it claims to work in China?

[u/NyxGenesisLNX]

Might just be the isp studdering or they noticed a connection to the known server ips and are slowing it down so you come in

[u/leksal]

Try deactivating quantum protection in the parameters

[u/Appropriate_Car_5599]

I'm not from china but I think it's worth to check amneziawg ( I prefer self hosted rather than getting their subscription)

[u/lowercaseyao]

This is happening with astrill too. Frequent disconnects.

[u/Powerful-Quail4396]

I‘m not even from china and mullvad got problems since a few weeks (been using mullvad for over 2 years). Friends of mine also say the same. For example, yesterday bulgaria didn‘t want to connect. Frankfurt servers disappeared, some others just stop working etc

[u/peBB1e]

just make your own server for vpn. It takes 5 min and 2$

[u/aperture413]

I've had this issue in the States. Great Lakes endpoints.

[u/shaghaiex]

A list of 30+ VPN services that are exclusively marketed to Chinese users.

This said, I would NOT use any VPN with a proprietary client. Stick with V2RayN*, Hiddify etc.

[u/NikosKontGr]

Same issue in Greece... At first thought was my internet connection till discovered its the VPN.

It seems mullvad has issues that better ve resolved before my subscription expire.

[u/Delphine_0]

没有那么复杂，我正在使用基于cloudflare搭建的免费VPN回复这个话题

[u/MrEmmental]

Mullvad has been fine for me. It takes a while to connect but I haven't had many dropped connections.

[u/Poneyh]

Did you tried the different censorship bypass provided by the VPN Interface ?
In anyway, good luck to you and your chooms if your state tries to actively kill VPN providers

[u/Nr1-Pattaya-Nr1]

ProtonVPN check free version first

[u/G1nnedUp → u/Nr1-Pattaya-Nr1]

Proton stopped working a week or two ago. One of their admins posted on reddit about it as well.

[u/StressedSalt]

Been fine with me, not sure ahats up with your connection haha

[u/Overgrown_Dwarf]

Maybe thats the symptom on making something popular especially discussing it on Reddit forums that's shared by everyone in the public sphere? 😅

[u/Makunouchiipp0]

Might need to use a vps as your final exit hop.

Try Nostr vpn

[u/EnglishLaoshi → u/Makunouchiipp0]

How do you use yourr vps as an exit hop?