Instagram does not work in China on a Chinese SIM card or on hotel Wi-Fi, and neither do WhatsApp, Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, X or Telegram. This applies everywhere in mainland China, including Hainan and its resort city Sanya; the island's visa-free entry for tourists changes nothing about its internet. The apps open, then sit on a loading screen, because the connection to their servers is filtered at the national gateways.
Two things do keep those apps working for travelers. International roaming and most travel eSIMs, because the data exits to the internet in your home country rather than in China; and a VPN that was installed and tested before departure, because the filter also blocks the websites and app stores you would need to set one up. Below: what works without doing anything, what does not, and how each option behaves in practice.
What is unreachable from Chinese networks
Everything from Google, including search, Maps, Gmail, Drive and the Play Store. Meta's apps: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads. YouTube, X, Telegram, Signal, Discord, Reddit and Wikipedia. Many Western news sites. Some cloud storage and note-taking services. ChatGPT and similar tools. The list moves over time, but the core has been stable for years.
Which apps you can install is a separate question: the Chinese App Store and Chinese Android stores do not carry many of them, so install what you need at home.
What works without a VPN
WeChat and Alipay, which handle payments, messaging, taxis and most daily life. Apple Maps, iMessage and FaceTime. Baidu Maps and Amap. Trip.com for hotels, trains and flights, DiDi for taxis. Bing usually loads. Most banking apps from home work, as do plain phone calls and SMS. Microsoft services are largely fine. Your hotel's booking confirmations, airline apps and translation apps with offline packs downloaded in advance all work.
Why roaming is the exception
When you roam on a foreign SIM, your phone uses the Chinese tower only for the radio signal. The data is handed to your home carrier under the roaming agreement and exits to the public internet in your home country. The Chinese gateways treat it as carrier-to-carrier transit, not as a user connection, and do not filter it. So on roaming, Instagram, WhatsApp and Google work exactly as at home, no VPN involved.
Most travel eSIMs work the same way: they are profiles of a foreign carrier, often from Hong Kong or Singapore, visiting China as a guest. The trade-offs are price and latency, since every request takes a detour through the home network. The full comparison, including what a local SIM gives you instead, is in eSIM, roaming or a local SIM in China.
How travelers on a local SIM keep using their apps
With a China Mobile or China Unicom SIM, or on hotel Wi-Fi, the traffic exits in China and the filter applies. Travelers who want their usual apps on that connection use a VPN, and the whole point is preparation:
- Install the app and sign in at home. VPN websites and the necessary app-store pages are usually unreachable from Chinese networks.
- Configure two options. Classic protocols such as OpenVPN and WireGuard are recognized by the filter and often fail to connect; protocols that look like ordinary HTTPS, such as VLESS with Reality, hold up better. Neither is guaranteed.
- Test at home: connect, open What Is My IP, confirm the address and country changed, run the WebRTC leak test.
- Keep roaming as a fallback for the days when nothing connects.
The legal side, the protocol details and the on-arrival troubleshooting are in VPN for China: what travelers need to know.
Sanya and Hainan specifically
Hainan is a free-trade port with visa-free entry for tourists from many countries, and it is piloting a program called Global Connect that gives some users unfiltered internet. According to the South China Morning Post, it is open to employees of companies registered in Hainan who hold a 5G plan with China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom, with approval taking up to five months. It is not available to tourists, and hotel Wi-Fi in Sanya is ordinary Chinese internet. Some international resorts advertise access to foreign services for guests; treat that as something to verify on the spot, not to count on. More on the island's connectivity in Internet in Sanya, Hainan for tourists.
Before you fly: a short checklist
- Decide how you will be online: roaming, travel eSIM, or local SIM plus VPN.
- Install WeChat and Alipay and link a card; QR payments are the default and cash is increasingly rare.
- Download offline maps and an offline translation pack.
- If you are taking a local SIM, install and test the VPN at home with two protocols configured.
- Save your hotel address in Chinese characters and your embassy's number in your notes, not only in a chat app.
Posting photos from the trip
On roaming or a travel eSIM, uploads to Instagram and WhatsApp work as they do at home, only with more latency. On a local SIM with a VPN, uploads go through the tunnel and are noticeably slower on busy evenings; large videos are easier to send in the morning or over the hotel Wi-Fi with the VPN on. If a post refuses to upload, check the connection on What Is My IP before blaming the app: a dropped tunnel looks exactly like a broken app.
404 VPN provides VLESS and WireGuard in one app, DNS resolved inside the tunnel, a kill switch, and locations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Thailand. The free plan is enough to test everything before departure. We do not promise availability from every Chinese network; we do recommend setting up at home. Start on the home page.