Internet access in China for visitors is easy to get and fast: 4G and 5G cover cities, resorts and the highways between them, hotels and cafés have Wi-Fi, and airports sell SIM cards against a passport. The question people are really asking is a different one. Does China have internet? Yes, an enormous one. Does it reach the services you use at home? From Chinese networks, only partly: Google, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube and most Western apps are filtered at the national gateways, while local services are fast and unrestricted.
How you get online decides which side of that line you are on. On your home carrier's roaming and on most travel eSIMs, your data exits to the internet in your home country and nothing is filtered. On a local SIM or hotel Wi-Fi, it exits in China, and visitors who want their usual apps add a VPN that was set up before the flight. Below, each option in practice, what works either way, and a pre-flight checklist.
Roaming: nothing to configure
Switch on data roaming and your phone uses Chinese towers for the radio signal only; the data is handed to your home carrier and reaches the public internet at home. The Chinese gateways see carrier transit, not a user session, and do not filter it. Everything works as at home. The price is the roaming rate, so check your carrier's China package before you fly and disable any automatic top-up to the most expensive tier, and the latency, since every request detours through your home network.
Travel eSIM: live before you land
A profile of a foreign carrier, often based in Hong Kong or Singapore, that roams in China on the same principle. Bought online, installed from a QR code at home, active when you land, cheaper than home roaming. You need an eSIM-capable, carrier-unlocked phone, and most plans are data-only. Read whose profile it is: a Chinese carrier's eSIM is a local SIM in digital form and is filtered like one. The comparison is in eSIM, roaming or local SIM in China; if it fails to connect on arrival, see eSIM not working in China.
Local SIM: cheapest, fastest, filtered
China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom sell tourist SIMs at airports and in stores. Passport, a few minutes, and you have the cheapest and fastest data available plus a Chinese number, which some apps and Wi-Fi portals ask for. It is Chinese internet: foreign services need a VPN that was installed and tested at home, and even then it is not guaranteed on every day. Preparation and the protocol question are in VPN for China: what to know before you land.
Hotel and café Wi-Fi
Nearly universal and often fast. Many networks require a phone number and an SMS code to log in, which is one reason to have a local SIM or roaming active. It is a Chinese connection with the same filtering, and it is also a shared network: for banking and email on it, a tunnel is worth having in any country. The general rules are in Is public Wi-Fi safe?.
What works from any connection
WeChat and Alipay, which carry nearly all payments, taxis and messaging with hotels. DiDi for taxis, Trip.com for hotels, trains and flights. Baidu Maps and Amap, and Apple Maps with a familiar interface. iMessage and FaceTime. Bing. Most banking apps and airline apps from home. Translation apps with an offline pack downloaded in advance. Plain calls and SMS. Set these up at home and check that you are signed in.
What is filtered from Chinese networks
Google search, Maps, Gmail, Drive and the Play Store. 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. On roaming and a travel eSIM, all of it works; on a local SIM or Wi-Fi, it needs a VPN. The details, service by service, are in Does Instagram work in China?.
Before you land: the checklist
- Choose your connection: roaming or a travel eSIM for a short stay, a local SIM plus VPN for two weeks or more, and roaming as a fallback either way.
- Install WeChat and Alipay, link a foreign card, complete identity verification. QR payments are the default; cash is accepted but increasingly unusual.
- Download offline maps and an offline translation pack; save your hotel address in Chinese characters.
- If you are taking a local SIM, install the VPN, configure two protocols, verify on What Is My IP, and save the configuration.
- Turn off automatic app updates and photo backup over mobile data; they burn through roaming packages.
The first day
Buy the SIM at the airport if that was the plan; it is quicker than in the city. Connect to the hotel Wi-Fi and see which of your services load. If the VPN does not connect, change protocol and server, switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, and if it still fails, use roaming for a few minutes and try again in the evening. Networks and times of day behave differently, and a first-day failure rarely means a whole-trip failure.
404 VPN provides VLESS and WireGuard in one app for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, DNS inside the tunnel, a kill switch, and locations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Thailand, the closest to China. The free plan of 5 GB a day covers the pre-flight checks. We do not promise availability from every Chinese network. Start on the home page.