What Is Blocked in China, and What Still Works

This is the part of planning a China trip where people get caught out, because the problem does not exist until you land. Your phone works, the airport wifi connects, and then nothing loads.

Here is what is actually blocked, what replaces it, and the options travellers use.

What does not work

On a mainland China internet connection, these are inaccessible:

Service	Status
Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Drive, Photos, Translate	Blocked
WhatsApp	Blocked
Facebook, Messenger, Instagram	Blocked
X (Twitter)	Blocked
YouTube	Blocked
Telegram	Blocked
Signal	Usually blocked
Dropbox	Unreliable to blocked
Most Western news sites	Partial or blocked

Hong Kong and Macau run on separate systems and are not subject to the same restrictions.

What works fine

This surprises people, because the assumption is that “the internet is off”. It is not — a large part of it works normally.

• Apple services: iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, Apple Maps, Apple Translate. All fine.
• Microsoft: Outlook, Office 365, Teams, Bing. All fine.
• Chinese services: Alipay, WeChat (including WeChat Pay), Didi, Baidu Maps, Amap.
• Streaming and shopping: Netflix generally works, Spotify generally works, Amazon works.
• Video calls: Zoom and Teams work. Google Meet does not.

Practical consequence: if your trip relies on Gmail, Google Maps and WhatsApp, you need a plan. If it relies on Apple, Microsoft and WeChat, you may need nothing at all.

The practical fix for a short trip

The cleanest route for a visitor is not a VPN. It is international roaming or a travel eSIM.

Here is why. A travel eSIM (Airalo, Nomad, Holafly and similar) is a data plan that attaches to your phone but routes through the operator’s home network — so your traffic exits the internet outside mainland China. Blocked services then load normally.

This is not circumvention. It is how roaming has always worked. It is a normal commercial product sold openly, and it is why we recommend it as the default for a one- or two-week trip.

Note the trade-off: a travel eSIM does not give you a Chinese phone number. A few services want one. In practice those are not services a visitor needs.

See staying connected for how eSIMs compare with local SIMs and roaming.

A note on VPNs

Many guides treat VPNs as the standard answer. The honest position is more complicated.

• China regulates VPNs. Only state-licensed providers may operate commercially.
• Using an unauthorised VPN is a legal grey area with real risk attached. Travellers are very rarely prosecuted for personal use, but “everyone does it” is not a legal defence.
• Enterprise VPNs registered by companies are legal — if you are travelling for work, your employer’s setup is the appropriate route.
• Rules and enforcement change. Anything specific we write here can be out of date by the time you travel.

If you do intend to use one, the practical requirements are: install it before you fly, test it before you fly, and have a fallback, because a VPN that cannot reach its own servers cannot download itself.

Our recommendation for a normal short trip is deliberately boring: take a travel eSIM and skip the question entirely.

The offline downloads that save the trip

Do all of this on home wifi, before departure.

1. Offline translation pack for Chinese. Apple Translate includes one. Google Translate’s offline pack is useless if the app cannot reach Google — see language basics.
2. Offline maps. Apple Maps downloads regions. Organic Maps and Maps.me work offline.
3. Your airline app, hotel confirmations, rail tickets — screenshotted, not just in email.
4. Didi, set up and logged in. See Didi and taxis.
5. Alipay or WeChat Pay, with a card linked. See the payments guide.
6. Screenshots of hotel names in Chinese characters. You will show them to drivers.

Anyone who arrives with only a Gmail tab open is going to have a bad first hour.

Wifi in China

• Hotels: near-universal and usually free. Speed varies. Some require a Chinese phone number to authenticate — ask the front desk.
• Cafés and restaurants: common, often password-protected.
• Airports and stations: free, and the connection itself is not blocked — but you still cannot reach blocked services through it.
• Trains: most high-speed services have wifi, but it is slow and sometimes not working.

Do not count on public wifi for anything you need to work. A data eSIM is the reliable layer.

Where this fits

Connectivity is a prerequisite, not a feature of the trip. Sort it in the same session as your payments, then read staying connected for the fuller comparison of eSIMs, roaming and local SIMs, and the FAQ hub if you only have ten minutes to prepare.