I ran Actual Budget on this for a hot minute, worked great

Unfortunately it’s still trial and error. Check out e.g Ovpn, Astrill, Mullvad though. You can always email and ask different providers as well. Though it’s best it you set it up before visiting China. A HK sim through Airalo or similar also works.

Yeah, I’ve heard Shanghai for example has zones where the GFW is much more lax?

It’s better to pay for a VPN provider that is verified to work in China. And no, they won’t kidnap you for using a VPN as some people write here. It’s a non-issue just to bypass the GFW. The issue is when you write to a Chinese audience things that the CCP do not like.

You don’t have to set up your own VPN. Many public providers work.

It’s crazy that this is an opinion that people really have. I don’t like authoritarian states and I have a lot of issues with the CCP, but this isn’t true at all. Loads of native Chinese living in China uses a VPN. They don’t care about it.

They have. I don’t know what people are talking about in this post. It’s bypassable easily, and the CCP won’t kill you for it. There are so many Chinese using aVPN themselves to bypass GFW

This needs to be told to so many on Lemmy. The “all or nothing” mentality is pervasive.

As long as I need jobs and money I’m not ready to ditch LinkedIn.

Haven’t heard about that. That sucks.