How to Use Proxies in China to Bypass Blocks and Filters

From its exclusive cultural practices to its unique governing style, China has always stood out amongst the rest of the world’s nations. While the attempt of the country to distinguish itself from the rest has, in fact, resulted in great prosperity over the years, the citizens and nationals are somewhat isolated from many advancements that have occurred in the world.

Flourishing at the speed of light, the internet, and numerous sources of information has the potential to take human advancement to skyrocketing levels. But in China, the strict surveillance and censorship of content hinder its people from reaching out into the global village and utilizing its many fruitful facets for a better life.

China filters the contents its citizens can access using a content-filtering project, often called the Great Firewall of China. To bypass this firewall, one may opt for the best VPN for China by VPNRanks or other contenders, allowing them to access blocked and filtered websites on the internet.

The Golden Shield Project

Deployed in 1996, the Golden Shield Project was an initiative the Chinese government took to filter and block content that they felt was against the public’s best interest. While this project remains operating effectively, the Western media has referred to it as the Great Firewall of China.

When netizens in China log on to their internet, they are served splinternet. Splinternet is the kind of network that divides information into fragments serving different purposes like politics, religion, or even national interests, such as that of China. While the entire world uses Google or Bing as their trusted search engines, the only one accessible in Chine is Baidu.

The Golden Shield Project employs various censorship techniques via this search engine, providing access to information that seems aligned with the cause of the project. Multiple research studies regard its complex and pristine censorship ability as the most sophisticated internet censorship regime in the entire world.

Conquer The Great Firewall of China

Even with its cutting-edge model and ability to survive the web since 1996, there are still some methods that can help you successfully conquer the Great Firewall of China. Two very commonly adopted techniques are the use of web proxies and VPNs.

The Proxy Prodigy

A web proxy, although not completely immune from the blocking and filtering attacks of the Great Firewall, is a pretty simple and harmless way of gaining access to the filtered content. A web proxy works because it hides your IP address and shows its own to the website you’re hopping on to.

So if a certain website blocks your IP address, a web proxy will provide you with smooth access. Proxies, as compared to VPNs, are cheaper to access and provide you with more IP addresses so you can rotate through them if one gets blocked. Web proxies are less secure than VPNs, but allow swift transitions from one proxy to another if caught.

The VIP VPN

A VPN is a more sophisticated and secure option. It requires proper credentials and authentication for you to log in and use it successfully, but this tardy process provides you a much safer surfing experience, valid for much longer as well. In addition, opting for a VPN means you are allowing your browser to use the tunneling method to hide your actual identity from blockers.

Due to its complex built model, it may be just a little slower than your standard web proxy, but it provides just enough speed for you to browse all content online effectively in time. One drawback is that if a VPN is blocked, it is not as easy to swap it for another one, as it is for a web proxy.

While using VPN and web proxies may give you access to the content you need, they are bound to be caught at one point in time. Although, recent news has seen the Chinese government block and unblocks some globally used sites, including Facebook. This indicates that there is still hope for the Chinese netizens to one day be able to access all that exists online.

Conclusion

We’ve all had the taste of isolation during the pandemic that recently impacted the world at great lengths. And almost every quarantined individual did feel just a little less lonely with the international arena just a few clicks away. Hence, none of us can imagine being completely trapped behind the bars of a firewall, strong enough to filter everything that can keep us afloat.

Thankfully, to bypass such challenging firewalls, experts have devices VPNs, and web proxies, enabling them access to unnecessarily blocked and filtered sites. So may the VPNs and proxies forever be in your favour!