HOW TO Get YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in Beijing
In order to get access to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc in China, you have two options:
1. Pay for a VPN
Put very simply, a VPN (“Virtual Private Network”) secretly connects you to another computer outside of the country. You then browse the web through that foreign computer, allowing you to access all of your evil western websites and bypass the Great Firewall of China.
There are some free VPNs out there, but they’re usually down because of everyone hunting for a way to get YouTube in China. If you want blocked-site access that badly, you’ll have to pay for it. Below are some paid VPN providers:
Witopia - Seems to be the China expat’s choice.
Ivacy - had an account with these guys for a little while. Really fast servers but a bit expensive.
Strong VPN - lots of servers all over the world, which is helpful for accessing country-specific content (e.g. Hulu or TSN.ca)
Torrents and P2P application access vary for each provider, so if that’s a deal-breaker for you, make sure to read the terms and conditions.
You may be wondering what the difference is between a proxy and a VPN. TUVPN has a great explanation over at their blog. Bottom line: VPN > proxy.
2. Use TOR
TOR is a bit more complicated. It works similar to VPNs in that you browse the web through other computers outside of your country. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy so I gave TOR a few tries. I got it to work a couple of times, but I found the reliability too low and the configuration/tweaking time too high so I just went for a VPN.
The advantage of TOR is that it’s free (and makes you feel like a cool anti-establishment type). If you’re still interested, keep reading at TOR Project.
