This is from someone who has been subscribed to Express VPN in China for the last two years. In that time, I have been able to access the internet for a total of about 8 months out of the two years. I am making this post as a warning to anyone who is planning to move to China or living in China that is considering purchasing a subscription before moving.
All you see online are paid advertisements, and anything you see with a “Does Express VPN work in China?” will be solely positive results. I can’t stress enough how frustrated I have been with the subscription. The customer service is good, and the representatives are available through online chat, but there is nothing they can do to help. It was over a month before the latest update after the connection stopped working, and even after that, nothing was fixed. It was basically a month of waiting, and the update was one line of text on the website saying, “We understand that China is experiencing connection problems, we are working on it.” My guess is that the market of users in China is too small, and they aren’t applying resources to fix the issues.
Anyways, just a warning. I don’t make posts often but I feel like I paid for nothing.
It was good for 2021 and before July 2022. After July the new GFW tech upgrade made VPN blocking a lot faster. EV is constantly rotating IP addresses but any changes get blocked within a few minutes. Looks like the detection is now protocol based instead of IP based.
Astrill kept working all the time, it’s possible that Astrill used better spoofing to throw protocol detection off, EV can’t catch up yet, or just Astrill is too small and not yet on the radar.
Did the one year plan when in moved to China, worked okayish for one monthly, barely working for 3+ months now. i was thinking the same about the positive reviews about China. misleading
Being in Beijing right now, ExpressVPN despite the recommended settings (auto-disconnect if internet connection fails).
I can get a connection to the servers, but it doesn’t last long enough to send or receive WhatsApp - Texts. It maybe worked one of the first times I tried, but not after that (trying for 3 days now).
I should have read this earlier. I just subscribed one year plan. It does not work in China, now. I have to wait for a month to see if the engineer can fix the issue. They have ios updated, but nothing changes.
Expressvpn doesn’t work in China as of November 21. I heard astrill works but they don’t have any money back guarantee. mullvad vpn is working for me and it’s cheap.
For me it never worked properly, when I first bought it was magical and after the first two or three months it literally never worked in Qingdao, I use a chinese vpn which works great, but their routing sucks for gaming, so I am honestly struggling…
Thanks for sharing. I am in China for 12 years and 12 years ago…Express VPN worked quite good. But sice 2016 , started to get more and more difficult to connect with Express VPN . Local friends told me to try Astrill VPN , and i am still using till today. That’s why Astrill is expensive, because is the only one in 2023 , now 2024 that I tr that is working here. I tried Nord and Express VPN , I wanted very much that they worked. Nord I couldn’t connect at all , and Expres VPN I could connect once or twice for few minutes and disconnected. Was frustrating and I felt quite irritated to see all the paid propaganda in Internet, always telliing that Express VPN is “the best for China”. How they know if they don’t leave here? If someone know another vpn that is currently working here, please share. All the best !
Given the recent unrest in China and the heavily implemented firewall, I have been a NordVPN subscriber for over a year. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that NordVPN does not work in China and ExpressVPN does not either. What VPN services are available that will be effective in mainland China?
Just came back from a three week visit in China. ExpressVPN didn’t work for a single day while I was there. The support was apologetic and gave me one extra month of service, however it was pretty useless for me because I got it for the sole purpose of using it for the duration.
Don’t get it if you plan on using it in China because it doesn’t work.
Can attest to this. Was in China half about 5 months ago and Express VPN worked. I tried Astrill and it did work. Was in Shenzhen (mainland, Guangdong).