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The Great Wall of China is one of the country’s best-known landmarks, designed to safeguard China’s people and national identity. But the country now has a more modern twist and, though it’s built far differently than its historical counterpart, it’s underpinned by many of the same reasons.
We’re talking about the Great Firewall of China – the colloquial term for the country’s extensive and globally unparalleled regime of internet censorship and control. With the aim of suppressing dissenting voices, maintaining social stability and promoting domestic companies, China’s digital Great Wall has blocked more than 8,000 websites to date.
And chances are, some of your favourites are among them. So below, we’re exploring the most prominent websites blocked in China in 2023 – as well as the ones that aren’t.
We’ll run you through why China bans websites and how – whether you’re heading to China on work or business, or reside there already – you can safely circumvent this censorship using a virtual private network (VPN) to retain access to the sites you need to live and work.
The Chinese government blocks some websites (and censors material on others) for a variety of political, socio-cultural, and economic reasons.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has retained leadership of the country since 1949, maintaining a one-party socialist system and holding firm over China’s political, economic and social structures. In 2023, China is, in international terms, officially considered a communist country, with the CCP limiting its citizens’ freedom of expression, assembly and association, and keeping an iron grip upon its political power.
To do this, the CCP must restrict the flow and spread of any information that contradicts its own views, policies, ideology or authority. This is why the CCP censors websites that criticise its government, or that promote democracy, human rights, or independence movements.
The CCP also blocks websites discussing sensitive issues from China’s past, including:
In modern China, the CCP retains strict control over all media, the internet, and public discourse within the country to maintain political stability and prevent the dissemination of views that contradict its own.
The CCP uses internet censorship to maintain social stability, blocking content that might incite protests, strikes, demonstrations or other forms of civil unrest.
Being a country with a diverse array of ethnic groups, cultural identities and languages, China also blocks any content promoting separatist movements or advocating for greater independence in autonomous regions (such as Tibet and Xinjiang). It wants a unified national identity and to promote perceptions of a single, unassailable China.
What’s more, China’s government censors content it deems at odds with its traditional values, blocking content it deems morally or culturally inappropriate to maintain a level of social conservatism. This includes pornography and any LGBTQIA+ content.
While China’s censorship policies predominantly relate to political and social reasons, there are many economic motivations for it, too.
By censoring foreign-owned apps and websites, China protects and promotes domestic internet and technology companies.
Instead of WhatsApp, China has Tencent-owned WeChat; in lieu of Slack, it has Alibaba-owned DingTalk; rather than Wikipedia, it has Baidu-owned Baidu Baike. With homegrown giants dominating China’s tech space, the government can spur job creation, economic growth and increased tax revenue.
There’s also an argument that, by controlling online content, the Chinese government can ensure its online marketplaces operate smoothly and without disruption, engendering consumer trust and contributing to the growth of its digital economy.
The bottom line, though? That, while no companies operating in China can refuse to comply with China’s content censorship, foreign businesses can at least choose not to offer their services to its market. China’s domestic companies, however, don’t have this luxury; so, by blocking popular companies from overseas, China incentivises the businesses it does have under its control to profit – while remaining firmly under its thumb.
The top 10 websites, apps and tools banned in China are:
In 2021, China blocked the BBC from broadcasting to its citizens – banning BBC World News from Chinese airwaves.
At the time, the BBC had been reporting on a range of issues highly sensitive to China, including the alleged torture and rape of Uighur people in “re-education” camps, as well as the country’s aggressive coronavirus testing policies and misreporting of Covid-19 death figures.
Soon after, the UK’s media regulator, Ofcom withdrew China’s licence to broadcast its English language news channel, CGTN, in the UK. In a statement, Ofcom said CGTN is “ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party”, and accused it of filing misleading statements regarding its ownership.
Among analysts – who concluded that, since BBC World News was already heavily censored in China, the move won’t have a huge impact – the BBC’s censorship is considered more a political, rather than a media-related move; a kind of ‘warning shot’ from the CCP reminding foreign news outlets that reporting that contrasts with China’s own views won’t be tolerated.
This principle has also seen the CCP block a huge range of other Western media outlets, and it reads like a who’s who of global news: CNN, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, TIME, The Guardian, and the New York Times are all unavailable in mainland China.
China began blocking Instagram (albeit intermittently) in 2014, and the American image- and video-sharing social media app has been blocked full-time in China since September 2014 as part of its ongoing crackdown against Western forms of social media.
It’s a ban that, at the time of writing, also includes:
Blocked amidst the rise of the Hong Kong protests of September to December 2014 – and the associated Umbrella Movement – China’s Instagram ban is in place to block the spread of potentially anti-Chinese content its users post. Censoring each piece of Instagram content as it comes through – the daily 1.3 billion images, 100 million posts, and more than a billion stories – would be impossible; a blanket ban is far easier.
Following a spate of mysterious service interruptions, China’s Gmail users were abruptly – and finally – cut off from the popular email service in December 2014.
The block (which also includes Google Play and G Suite apps such as Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar and Maps) has its antecedents in a spat between Google and the Chinese government in 2010.
Google, when asked by the CCP to censor its search results for Chinese users, refused, upping sticks from its Beijing office and swiftly setting up shop over in Hong Kong.
Google and China have endured a strained relationship ever since. The biggest impact of the argument, however, has been the Chinese people – who miss out on an email service relied on by around 1.8 billion people worldwide.
Some of Google’s services remain, though – albeit in a censored form. China’s internet users can still access Google’s search engine from the mainland, but they’ll be redirected to its Hong Kong service (Google.com.hk), and the results they receive will be censored by the CCP.
Gmail and the G Suite range join a glut of other productivity apps – including Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Hootsuite – in being banned in mainland China.
With more than 551 million monthly listeners as of Q2 2023, Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world. Yet, it registers these totals without mainland China-based listeners – for whom Spotify has been blocked since October 2008 ( just two years after Spotify was founded in 2006).
China has a long history of blocking foreign services that could pose competition to its own domestic alternatives. In this case, that alternative is QQ Music, China’s foremost music streaming service, which is owned by the Tencent Music Entertainment Group.
After going live in May 2001, the Chinese Wikipedia – Wikipedia as the Western world knows it, but in written vernacular Chinese (a form of Mandarin) – was first blocked on 3 June 2004. Just 19 days later, access was mysteriously restored, before disappearing again (this time for just four days) in September that year.
Wikipedia was shuttered by China again in October 2005, before a convoluted decade of blocking, unblocking and availability with partial censorship. Ironically, there’s a whole essay on the topic on Wikipedia itself; albeit one inaccessible in China.
Since 2015, Wikipedia has been banned in mainland China. According to Wikipedia itself, this block is attributable to Wikipedia’s use of HTTPS encryption, which made it harder for the Chinese government to selectively censor Wikipedia’s content.
The free online encyclopaedia, which is maintained by its community of volunteers, attracts around 2 billion unique visits every month. Banning Wikipedia has enabled Baidu Baike (a Chinese-language internet encyclopaedia owned by Baidu, China’s 29th-largest company by market capitalisation) to thrive. Unlike Wikipedia, Baidu Baike complies with the CCP’s demands for censorship – so it’s easy to see why it’s the government’s preferred (and homegrown) option.
DuckDuckGo and Amazon Alexa are similar search engines blocked in China, while Bing is still available, albeit in a heavily censored form.
China hasn’t been alone in blocking Wikipedia. In 2013, Iran blocked at least 963 articles (including Emma Watson’s bio) citing moral and social objections, while in 2017, Turkey banned Wikipedia for almost three years in objection to a Wikipedia article on state-sponsored terrorism, which described Turkey as a sponsor for Al-Qaeda and Isis.
Used by more than 2.7 billion people around the world every month, Meta-owned WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. Not so in China.
The CCP has joined fellow countries Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and the UAE by blocking WhatsApp in mainland China in 2017.
WhatsApp is blocked because it utilises end-to-end encryption to safeguard the privacy of its users’ messages – meaning the Chinese authorities can’t tap into them for a peek, or to censor their content.
Instead, most Chinese people communicate through WeChat, which boasts more than 1.32 billion active users. WeChat (which, like China’s Spotify-alternative QQ Music, is owned by Tencent) is subject to the stringent oversight of CCP’s internet censors and must comply with China’s intelligence laws. It’s yet another example of the Chinese government blocking Western apps in favour of its own companies – companies which, in turn, it can compel to cooperate with its authoritarian censorship regime.
In its ban by the Chinese authorities, WhatsApp is joined by fellow messaging apps Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal, Line, Viber, and the Korean app KaKao Talk.
With Google on China’s red list, it comes as little surprise that one of the companies it owns – video-sharing colossus YouTube – is also blocked in China.
YouTube was first blocked in China for a five-month period between October 2007 to March 2008, before being banned again – this time indefinitely – from late March 2009.
The reasoning? That on YouTube, around 3.7 million new videos are uploaded each day – so censorship becomes, a logistical and resource-intensive nightmare, if not impossible. With much of the Western world – including many Chinese expatriates – critical of the state’s insular and oppressive political, social and economic policies, many take to video-sharing platforms, like YouTube, to share their views. And they’re not views China is willing to allow its citizens to entertain.
Along with YouTube, other video-sharing platforms banned in China include Vimeo, DailyMotion, Twitch and Periscope, plus music streaming services such as Pandora, Bandcamp and SoundCloud.
It isn’t just songs or videos being censored, either – but the written word, too. China has also banned its mainland-located citizens from accessing popular blogging platforms, including Medium and Blogspot, as well as non-privately hosted WordPress.com websites.
Snapchat joins a litany of Western social media platforms in being banned in China.
A couple of reasons are at play here. The first is the most obvious – that Snapchat, through facilitating image- and video-sharing, represents an uncensorable threat to the social stability and cultural uniformity China is so desperate to protect.
The second? That Snapchat doesn’t have servers in China. Despite having an office in Shenzhen, Snap Inc – Snapchat’s majority stakeholder – doesn’t keep servers there. With the Chinese government requiring that companies that handle Chinese data keep their servers on the Chinese mainland (which, of course, makes them easier to access for censorship purposes), this automatically rules Snapchat out of the Chinese market.
That said, a look at Snapchat’s ownership reveals that Tencent (which, you’ll remember, also has its fingers in the pies of Spotify and WhatsApp alternatives QQ Music and WeChat, respectively) purchased a 12 per cent stake in Snap Inc in 2017.
This shows that, while China’s government is wary of both the influence of Western social media on their people and of the capital flight Chinese investment in overseas companies represents, Chinese companies feel differently. Still, Snapchat remains banned in China – and, regardless of Chinese investment, it doesn’t look as if that will change anytime soon.
Quora – a question-and-answer website allowing people to post and respond to their fellow users’ queries online – has over 300 million monthly active users, with up to 5,000 questions being asked every day.
China has been blocking Quora since 2018, with concerns that such open sharing of information is detrimental to the social and cultural unity of its people. Quora is an extremely politically-charged platform, too – so the propensity for people on it to espouse views that challenge the strict, suppressive policies of China’s regime is strong.
Founded in 2011, Zhihu has emerged as China’s closest equivalent to Quora. However, the questions and answers bounced around on Zhihu – as well as on similar Chinese online community forums such as Weibo and Douban – tend to revolve around less sensitive topics, such as celebrity gossip and films, rather than politics.
Yet, as we also saw with the Chinese government’s sanctions against QQ Music in 2021, Beijing isn’t afraid to discipline its own companies to enforce its strict censorship policies. It also gave Zhihu, Douban and Weibo a stern talking-to in 2021, when it criticised these companies for the “illegal” and “forbidden” information circulating on their platforms. Chinese authorities failed to specify what the information was.
As China’s action to ban productivity platforms such as GSuite, Dropbox and OneDrive shows, it isn’t afraid to block business tools for businesses – and Slack is no exception.
While the enterprise communication tool – which, as of 2023, boasts 42.7 million daily users – is a corporate staple throughout the Western world, it’s blocked in China. Instead, the country’s white-collar workers rely largely on apps, including Tencent’s WeCom (formerly WeChat Work) and the Alibaba Group’s DingTalk. Both comply with the Chinese government’s censorship demands – something Slack’s founders would’ve been unlikely to do.
At this stage, it’s perhaps easier to list which popular apps and services haven’t been banned in China – so what sites can you access when living, working or travelling in the Asian country?
Streaming services, including Netflix and Disney+, are still available – albeit with a caveat. While you can access these platforms’ websites from mainland China, you won’t be able to watch any content on them – simply because the country hasn’t licensed any. The titles available on streaming services differ wherever you are in the world.
Where Google and Meta failed, Apple succeeded – and both FaceTime and iMessage are accessible from China. As of 2023, no Western banks have had their websites or mobile apps blocked, either – so you should still be able to view and access your money while in China.
As for social media platforms, LinkedIn isn’t banned in China – it simply has no presence there. After launching in China in 2014 with limited features (users were, for example, unable to post articles and there was no social feed), Chinese authorities clamped down on LinkedIn in March 2021 – giving it a 30-day deadline to comply with the government’s content regulation policies. Later that year, LinkedIn shuttered its platform in China completely, relaunching under a different name, InJobs. In 2023, however, this too was binned.
Similarly, Amazon isn’t blocked in China. But in 2019, it closed its operations there to focus instead on cross-border sales to Chinese consumers. Likewise, eBay isn’t blocked in China – it simply failed to take root there.
eBay’s, LinkedIn’s and Amazon’s struggles in the Chinese market indicate that the failure of Western brands there isn’t always because they’re blocked – but because, in China, they lack the mainstream power and appeal of their Chinese counterparts.
For anyone looking to access the internet in China, here’s the state of play:
In China, you can access the internet via wifi – which hotels, cafes, and restaurants often provide free – or by picking up a SIM card from the airport when you fly in.
China’s internet is supplied by a trio of internet service providers (ISPs): China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom. All are owned by the state, which means whichever company you choose, your searches will be subject to strong restrictions, and the results censored.
So what can you do about it?
In 2023, the easiest, most convenient way to bypass China’s internet censorship is through a VPN. With a VPN, you can mask your device’s IP address with another IP address – from almost anywhere in the world. A VPN is like a proxy server in that it hides where your internet traffic is coming from. However, VPNs have the added benefit of funnelling that traffic between the VPN network and your device through an encrypted tunnel, a process known as Secure Shell (SSH) tunnelling.
By using an IP address from another country – the UK, for instance – you can access websites available in the UK, even if you’re physically located in China. You could continue to watch Netflix; shop on Amazon; engage with your followers on Facebook, X, and Instagram; listen to your favourite albums on Spotify; communicate with your colleagues on Slack; or access unbiased, impartial news from sites, such as the BBC, as you would at home.
Using a VPN in China has one key limitation, though – and that’s that VPN websites are also blocked there. This is why, if you’re heading to China and don’t want to be cut off from the apps and tools you use every day, we recommend installing a VPN before you arrive.
That said, VPNs won’t protect you from everything – and they do have limitations. VPNs:
Another drawback of VPNs is that they cost money. VPNs are billed on a subscription basis – typically monthly or yearly – so the fees can add up. However, while free VPNs are available, they don’t offer the same level of protection or features that paid-for subscriptions do.
For a cheaper option to circumventing censorship in China, the Tor network can help. Short for “The Onion Router”, it’s a free, open-source application you can download for your browser, and – like a VPN – it’s designed to safeguard your privacy and anonymity online.
Like an onion, the Tor network conceals traffic through layers of volunteer-operated servers called “nodes” or “relays”. Each node knows only about the one before and after it – thus concealing the origins and destinations of data packets.
That said, the Tor network is perhaps most effective not on its own, but in combination with a VPN. And the best VPNs offer access to Tor as an additional security option.
Connecting to the Tor network is more difficult in China, but not impossible. To find out more about how to get around the Great Firewall of China’s attempts to block searches through the network, explore Tor’s guide to connecting to the Tor network from China.
Heading to China, and want to retain access to your favourite websites? Here’s how:
Accessing content and websites blocked in China is important – particularly when it relates to keeping in contact with family and friends, and staying informed about what’s happening in the world beyond Chinese borders.
But, unblocking content should never come at the cost of your safety. So here are our top tips for maintaining online privacy and bypassing censorship safely while in mainland China:
China is a beautiful place. From the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven, the country is filled with stunning natural vistas, remnants of bygone dynasties, and beautiful historical sites, not to mention the Great Wall – the real one, that is.
Add to this its friendly, welcoming people, and there’s every reason to live in, work in, and holiday to China – providing you do so equipped with all the facts.
China’s authoritarian government is one of the least democratic in the world. It takes swift, often brutal action to silence dissenting voices, muffling any past, present or future opposition to its regime through censorship and content manipulation on a nationwide scale.
When you experience struggles accessing the internet in China, then – and use a VPN or proxy server to circumvent internet censorship – keep these facts in mind to stay as safe as possible, both as you travel, and while accessing the internet.
Don’t take any risks; research, select, download, and test a VPN before you go.
No. Facebook and Instagram are both blocked in China, so the only way you’ll be able to access these websites is through installing a VPN before you arrive in China.
VPNs aren’t illegal in China, however they are heavily restricted by the country’s authoritarian government. Official policy states VPNs unapproved by the government are banned.
Consumers, then, can legally use VPNs in China. Chinese citizens caught selling or creating VPNs have received prison sentences and fines (albeit applied inconsistently), but foreigners found using a VPN are less likely to face harsh penalties.
By changing the geolocation of your device’s unique IP address to that of a server from around the world, proxy servers can be extremely effective at bypassing censorship in countries where online content is manipulated and regulated.
However, a VPN – especially multiple VPNs, combined with the Tor network – are the most reliable strategies for unblocking content while abroad.
Circumventing internet censorship in China can come with legal consequences – and the Chinese government has arrested and prosecuted people attempting to enable access to blocked websites through creating and distributing VPNs. And, if you’re not careful about how you access the internet in China – and the tools you use to do so with privacy – you could attract the ire of, or more intense surveillance by, its authorities.
Other, perhaps less serious, risks include slower internet speeds while using a VPN in China, or disruption to your internet service. Using a non-reputable VPN can also expose you to increased cybersecurity risks, leaving you vulnerable to hacking, data theft, or malware attacks.
With Google unavailable, Bing and Yandex are alternatives – though the heavy censorship of their search results means you’ll only find answers the Chinese authorities deem appropriate.
For online searches, China relies primarily on Baidu, which has cornered more than 75 per cent of the market. However, Baidu only indexes sites that use simplified Chinese characters – so the results it produces are essentially entirely in Mandarin. And, without Google Translate – which is blocked – you’ll have to find another way to translate them if you don’t speak the language.
