With the news of the Chinese government’s plan to block all VPN access starting February 2018, it seems that soon enough the precious VPN technology that has so far been indispensable in the battle against censorship may be rendered useless to Chinese users, which is a scary thought indeed. However, while there is still some hope that these strict measures will not be taken, at least not so soon, we continue looking for good VPNs for China. In this post, we focus on the popular TunnelBear VPN service and determine its usefulness in bypassing the Great Firewall.
The Results
Unfortunately, ever since China’s witch hunt against VPNs began, TunnelBear users have been struggling to get a decent connection with this service. While this does not mean that it is impossible to circumvent censorship using TunnelBear, it does mean that quite often, the service does not work as expected and disconnections frequently occur, much to the frustration of its users. However, there are still a number of users that rely on this service and our tests showed that the Singapore server is the most reliable option, with good chances of some pretty decent speeds as well.
As you can see, when it comes to TunnelBear, it is not easy to give a simple yes-or-no answer. What we can say with certainty is that TunnelBear possesses the ability to unblock content its Chinese users wish to view. What is also obvious is that it may not be of use 100% of the time.
The good news is that you can test the service free of charge, as TunnelBear offers a limited free version, so you do not have to worry about losing any money. The problem is that due to restricted server access with the free version, you may experience unsatisfactory speeds. That being said, we must conclude that TunnelBear is not our first choice when it comes to circumventing China’s Internet censorship, but it may still be worth a shot.