The Incomplete Guides On Getting Past The GFW
I'm not claiming to be an expert these subject matters. I'm just someone on the Internet that read up a lot on subjects and topics related to the GFW. Using what I have learn, through many trials and errors, I'm able to setup multiple types of proxy servers and clients. So any information I write on these subject matters could be incorrect and might not work for you on your end.
The reason I call these guides incomplete is the constant "cat and mouse" game between China's Great Firewall(GFW) and Chinese Internet users over blocking and accessing websites outside of China. OpenVPN and wireguard(used by many popular VPN providers) protocols are easily detected by the GFW's deep packet inspection(DPI), as those protocols have very predictable packet sizes and packet header labels them as OpenVPN or wireguard. Which works great outside of China, Iran, and Russia. As most countries around the world's ISP don't use DPI on your Internet traffic.
Speaking of Iran and Russia, I don't have any experience with those two countries' firewalls. So I can't say these guides will help anyone getting past their firewalls. All I know is that China uses blacklisting, Iran uses whitelisting, and Russia maybe use a combination of both. With blacklisting, you can't access any domain names and/or IP addresses(including VPN servers) that are on the blacklist with new ones being added temporarily or permanently by DPI. With whitelisting, you can only access domain names and/or IP addresses that are in the whitelist. That’s why Iranian Internet traffic dropped by 99% when their firewall changed to a full whitelisting system.
China GFW, ISP, and VPN/Proxy Providers
So the GFW is not just one great firewall like the Great Wall of China. There are firewall servers located all over China at datacenters used by all of the Chinese IPS. So during politically sensitive events like National Party Congress, all the firewall servers will heavily block well known China VPN/proxy providers.
There are three major Internet Service Providers(ISP) in China. While all three provide mobile Internet services, China Telecom and China Unicom also provide broadband Internet service with China Mobile well being mobile only. From my experience, I chose China Unicom over the other two providers for both mobile and broadband. Some apartment buildings only have either China Unicom or Telecom as the only broadband provider, but I find China Telecom's network is overloaded during holidays when everyone is streaming IPTV at home. I find China Mobile will actively start blocking when I use it for a couple of minutes on my phone.
Jichang(机场), translated as Airport, is Chinese slang term for Chinese commercial VPN/proxy service.
I have stop using commercial VPN/proxy in China. There is a big dichotomy for these providers. The more popular your service gets, the more likely your servers get blocked by the GFW. There is no way to hide the IP addresses of those servers. The VPN/proxy client app needs to know what the hostnames/IP addresses of VPN/proxy servers, so it could try to connect to them. So the people who run the GFW just have to subscribe the popular services and they also get the same list of IP addresses. So during sensitive events, they just put those IP addresses on the blacklist. Doesn't ready matter if they keep changing the IP addresses, get to see the new ones as soon as they put them out to their customers.
So you will see many posts on different China sub-Reddits saying ShadowFly, V1VPN, LetsVPN, WannaFlix, Astrill, or Mullvad works great for me and then you see the post get downvoted with a reply saying same provider isn't working for them. Well the original poster might in different part China with a different ISP than the person that's replying. Or the same VPN provider might work great on one day and another day, it stop working because the GFW decide to block their servers.
Running Your Own VPN/Proxy Server
So the answer is to running your VPN/proxy server. From now on, it just going call it proxy server. While VPN protocols encrypt their taffic and hide your real IP adddres and don't activatily hide themselves from DPI. With proxys protocols that I'm writing about are trying actively disguise themselves as regular Internet traffic to hide from DPI.
You're the only one using the proxy server(s). You might share the share the server(s) couple of friends or family members. So it's very unlike it/they get noticed by the GFW.
Proxy Hosting Server
I have multiple proxy servers setup with different VPS hosting providers. Basically I find cheapest hosting deals at LowEndTalk.com, usally with 1vCPU, +1GB RAM, and +10GB Storage. I paid from US$1 to $5 a month and data usage of 1TB to unlimited. The cheaper the VPS you gets, the most likely you're sharing the the resources on the physical server. While running the proxy service on the VPS does not take a lot of CPU, memory, nor disk resources, but the you might not enough data transfer rate to watch a 1080p video on YouTube or Netflix.
On order page for the VPS, there will be a selection of Linux OS that will be install on the VPS. Always select Debian and the latest stable version, 13 "trixie". Some provider might only have the older version 12 "bookworm", which stop being activily support by the main team, but by volunteers that might now give timely security updates.
I also setup an used Dell mini computer at a family member's home and running Debian Linux with 3x-ui as my last resort backup server. It's mainly connect to it when my banking website won't let be log in because they detect a VPN IP address.
Domain Name
Although it's not require, you should a register a domain and have unqiue hostname for each of your VPS servers. Especially if you're planning to use Cloudflare CDN. You don't have to buy and register a domain with, they cost around $10 per year. You could got Porkbun.com and regist a .top domain for less $2 and pay $5 to renew it. It just need extra steps to have Cloudflare being the 2 DNS servers for the domain and copy the DNSSEC info over PorkBun.com to locked it down.