Is My App or Website Blocked in China?

DOUBLE TRAP: Completely blocked on domestic Wi-Fi. Even on roaming eSIM or VPN, China's GCJ-02 datum obfuscation law forces an intentional ~500m coordinate shift, placing your GPS blue dot in a river or inside a wrong building. Public transit and opening hours are years out of date.

On domestic hotel Wi-Fi, translate.google.com and live cloud translation are completely blocked (Google shut down its China translate server in Oct 2022). The mobile App only functions on Wi-Fi if you pre-download the offline language pack. However, on an international roaming eSIM or VPN, both Google Translate web and live cloud translation work smoothly.

On domestic hotel Wi-Fi or cellular data, the native iOS Apple Maps app automatically switches its underlying engine to AutoNavi (高德地图) with flawless English subway arrivals and 0m coordinate shift. HOWEVER: if you have a Global Mode VPN enabled (routing traffic through the US/UK) or use Apple Maps on a laptop browser, it reverts to TomTom overseas map layers—causing road data to vanish and shifting your GPS pin ~500m off-target due to GCJ-02 datum differences!

Completely blocked on hotel, cafe, and airport Wi-Fi. However, international eSIMs (Airalo, Nomad, Holafly) route traffic outside mainland China, letting WhatsApp work smoothly without a VPN.

China’s indispensable super-app. Restaurants, taxis, hotel check-ins, and local guides run on WeChat. Foreign registration may require an existing user to verify your QR code.

Absolute prerequisite for survival in China. Accepts foreign Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover without a local Chinese bank account. Zero transaction fees on purchases under 200 RMB (~$28 USD).

Unlike Google Translate, Microsoft Translator connects reliably to domestic Azure servers in China. Photo translation, voice conversation split-screen, and text translations work without any VPN.

Duolingo connects smoothly to learning servers on domestic broadband without a VPN—audio pronunciation, streak syncing, and friend leaderboards work 100%. The only catch: it was removed from Chinese domestic Android app stores years ago due to local regulation, so you cannot download it locally once inside China.

Blue bubbles work end-to-end in China. Text and photos send without a VPN. Sending SMS (green bubbles) requires an active cellular carrier with international roaming enabled.

FaceTime Video calls connect natively on Chinese Wi-Fi with crystal-clear latency. However, foreign visitors should know that iPhones manufactured for the Mainland China market have FaceTime Audio and Group FaceTime permanently disabled at hardware level. Foreign iPhones retain all features.

While Google Search is 100% blocked, Microsoft's bing.com (and the Bing mobile app) loads fast on any hotel Wi-Fi without a VPN. Note: On local Wi-Fi, it may auto-redirect to cn.bing.com (which still has an English toggle).

Both deepl.com and the mobile app generally work on Mainland broadband without a VPN, though the free API may lag slightly during peak evening hours.

Runs 100% offline on your phone. Features instant optical character recognition (OCR), handwriting input (draw unfamiliar characters with your finger), and Pinyin lookup.

Uber does not operate in China. DiDi is the universal ride-hailing network. You do not even need the standalone app—open Alipay, tap the DiDi mini-program, and enjoy full English pickup and in-app automated translation with drivers.

The official app for high-speed rail. Has an English interface. Once your passport is verified, tickets are tied directly to your passport number with zero booking fees.

The definitive domestic mapping system. Shows exact subway exits, floor plans of shopping malls, and real-time traffic.

United Airlines servers and check-in APIs are unblocked by the GFW. You can check flight status, select seats, and pull mobile boarding passes on hotel Wi-Fi. However, the in-app interactive route map relies on Google Maps and will stay blank without a VPN, and push notifications may fail on Android devices without Google Play Services.

aa.com and the American Airlines mobile app connect smoothly on mainland broadband without a VPN. Baggage tracking, boarding passes, and AAdvantage account balances load quickly.

airfrance.com and the Air France app are not blocked in China. European travelers and transiting passengers can check in and download boarding passes on domestic Wi-Fi without VPN.

British Airways mobile app and ba.com function normally on domestic Chinese broadband for flight bookings, Executive Club management, and digital boarding passes.

Don't be fooled when the app opens smoothly—Airbnb exited the domestic China market in July 2022. You cannot book any stays inside Mainland China on Airbnb.

Ctrip’s global international brand. Unlike Booking.com or Agoda, Trip.com guarantees that front desks will accept your passport. 24/7 English customer support solves on-ground disputes in minutes.

While China officially scrapped the "Foreigner-Only Hotel License" rule recently, budget hotels on Booking.com still frequently turn foreigners away at midnight because receptionists don't know how to register foreign passports in the local police (PSB) system.

Unblocked on Wi-Fi. However, like Booking.com, many cheap local listings haven't trained their front desk staff on how to register foreign passports in the local police (PSB) system—leading to awkward rejections upon arrival even after prepayment.

Uber sold its China business to DiDi in 2016. The global Uber app will display "No cars available" anywhere in mainland China.

Works fine on Wi-Fi, but booking domestic Chinese airlines through tiny third-party OTAs listed on Skyscanner often fails with foreign credit cards or omits passport details required for Chinese boarding passes.

NFC tap-to-pay via foreign credit cards works at high-end international hotel chains, Starbucks, and Apple Stores. However, China is a 99% QR-code economy. Street food, taxis, subways, and convenience stores cannot scan or tap Apple Pay directly.

Major Western banking apps (Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, HSBC, Capital One) are NOT blocked by China’s Great Firewall. However, logging in from a Chinese IP frequently triggers automated anti-fraud security freezes on your online banking. Furthermore, receiving 2FA SMS verification codes on your home SIM can lag or fail completely on hotel Wi-Fi.

The Schwab investor debit card is the holy grail for travel in China: unlimited worldwide ATM fee rebates. Bank of China and ICBC major branch ATMs accept Schwab debit cards for RMB cash withdrawals with zero foreign transaction fees.

paypal.com and the PayPal app connect smoothly on Chinese Wi-Fi. However, physical merchants, taxis, and restaurants in China DO NOT accept PayPal. It is strictly useful for sending money home or paying international hotel bookings online.

Wise website and app connect natively without VPN on Chinese Wi-Fi. You can convert USD/EUR/GBP to CNY and send money directly to Chinese Alipay or WeChat Pay users (via their UnionPay debit cards).

You cannot tap a physical Revolut card at local street stalls. However, binding your Revolut card to Alipay allows zero-fee payments for transactions under 200 RMB.

kraken.com and Kraken mobile APIs are blocked by the Great Firewall on domestic Chinese broadband. However, unlike Binance, Kraken does not aggressively ban international roaming IPs. US- and EU-verified accounts can trade and monitor positions normally over an international roaming eSIM.

China outlawed cryptocurrency transactions and exchanges in September 2021. binance.com and the mobile app are hard-blocked by the GFW. Even more critically: Binance itself actively geofences and restricts traffic from Mainland China and Hong Kong IPs. Since most travel eSIMs (Airalo, Nomad) route traffic through Hong Kong, Binance will lock trading or display geographic restriction warnings.

Instagram and Threads are entirely blocked on Chinese Wi-Fi alongside all Meta infrastructure. However, on any foreign roaming eSIM, stories, Reels, DMs, and Threads feed load with full speed.

The mobile app detects Mainland carrier SIM cards at the hardware level—showing a black screen or "No Internet" even with a VPN on. However, tiktok.com on a laptop browser works fine with a VPN.

Blocked on all domestic broadband connections. YouTube Premium downloads can be played offline without an internet connection.

All x.com, twitter.com, and twimg.com domains are blocked on hotel Wi-Fi. Roaming eSIMs load feeds and spaces with 0 latency.

Completely blocked on domestic networks. Facebook login buttons on third-party sites will hang and timeout.

Meta’s newly released AI agent and features (integrated across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses) connect to Meta AI infrastructure that is completely blocked on Chinese Wi-Fi. Furthermore, Meta AI actively geo-restricts AI responses if your account or IP is outside supported Western countries.

Blocked on Chinese hotel broadband since late 2018. Works smoothly on roaming mobile data.

Medium has been blocked in China since 2016. Neither the medium.com domain, custom publication domains, nor the mobile reading app will load on hotel or airport Wi-Fi. It opens instantly on any foreign roaming eSIM.

While substack.com is not consistently DNS-poisoned across all Chinese provinces, its media CDN (substackcdn.com) and custom author subdomains suffer severe packet loss and connection resets on hotel broadband. On roaming eSIMs, the Substack app streams text and audio podcasts without issue.

As long as your Spotify account was registered abroad, music streams normally on hotel Wi-Fi.

Netflix does not operate in China. On domestic Wi-Fi it is blocked. On an eSIM routing via Hong Kong, it loads the Hong Kong regional catalog.

CapCut is the international version of JianYing (剪映). ByteDance enforces an aggressive geographic geofence: if CapCut detects a Chinese carrier SIM card or a Mainland/Hong Kong IP address, it displays "CapCut is not available in your region" or disables templates, cloud projects, and AI audio tools. On hotel Wi-Fi, it will not function.

All Google services (mail.google.com, docs.google.com, drive.google.com) are completely blocked on domestic hotel and broadband Wi-Fi. However, on an international roaming eSIM, everything syncs instantly.

Slack is not strictly blocked, but its real-time WebSocket connections suffer from severe throttling and random disconnects on hotel Wi-Fi. Push notifications on mobile often delay by 30+ minutes.

Foreign users can join and participate in Zoom calls seamlessly over Chinese Wi-Fi without a VPN. Audio and video latency are remarkably good due to Zoom’s partner infrastructure in China.

Microsoft 365 and Teams route through compliant cloud infrastructure in China. Chats, document co-editing, and video calls work smoothly on hotel Wi-Fi without needing a VPN.

In August 2023, LinkedIn completely retired its local social feed and InJobs service in Mainland China. On hotel Wi-Fi without VPN, opening the global LinkedIn app results in network error screens or an empty feed. However, on an international roaming eSIM or VPN, the standard global LinkedIn app and messaging work 100% normally.

Discord's Cloudflare gateway, text channels, media CDNs, and RTC voice servers are completely blocked by China's GFW. On local Wi-Fi, the app will spin on "Connecting" indefinitely. On an international roaming eSIM, Discord loads text, images, and voice calls normally.

You can often browse github.com repos on hotel Wi-Fi, but terminal commands (git clone/push over SSH/HTTPS) and raw.githubusercontent.com suffer from severe packet loss and connection resets.

Both apps aren't directly blocked on Wi-Fi if you are already logged in. The trap triggers on the Web or new devices when you click "Sign in with Google"—the accounts.google.com OAuth popup will 100% hang and fail on hotel Wi-Fi. On a foreign eSIM, Google login works normally.

The Figma desktop app opens and syncs changes, but real-time multi-user cursor latency can be high. Crucially, web-based Google OAuth fails on domestic broadband.

lu.ma is widely used for tech, Web3, and startup meetups in China’s Tier-1 cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen). The site loads cleanly on domestic broadband without a VPN. The only trap: clicking "Add to Google Calendar" after RSVPing will hang because accounts.google.com is blocked.

meetup.com is not formally domain-blocked, but Cloudflare Bot Management and GFW packet inspection frequently trap Chinese IP addresses in endless Cloudflare Turnstile verification loops. Running Meetup over a roaming eSIM bypasses this instantly.

CRITICAL TWO-WAY BLOCK: Blocked by China’s firewall on Wi-Fi. Furthermore, OpenAI actively blocks connections from Hong Kong IP addresses! Since most travel eSIMs (Airalo, Nomad) route traffic through Hong Kong, ChatGPT will display "Country Not Supported". (Note: This applies to Mainland China and HK; OpenAI allows direct access in other global regions).

China’s premier open-weights and reasoning AI model (DeepSeek-R1 / V3). Unrestricted on domestic broadband, blazingly fast, and fully bilingual in English and Chinese.

SEVERE WARNING: Anthropic enforces an aggressive automated fraud and geofencing policy. If you attempt to log into Claude from a Mainland China IP, a Hong Kong roaming IP, or a cheap shared VPN server that leaks WebRTC/DNS, Anthropic will not just block your session—they will PERMANENTLY BAN and terminate your Claude account without appeal!

Blocked on Chinese Wi-Fi alongside all Google domains. Works normally on international roaming eSIMs.

Perplexity does not ban Hong Kong or roaming IPs. While blocked by Chinese ISP firewalls, it works smoothly on any international eSIM.

Wispr Flow's live audio transcription streams microphone audio to overseas Whisper and LLM inference endpoints. On Chinese domestic broadband, the real-time WebSocket connection is cut off by the Great Firewall within seconds. It works at full speed over an international roaming eSIM.

Unlike Tinder, Bumble is NOT blocked by the Great Firewall. You can browse profiles, match, and message directly over domestic Wi-Fi. Very active expat and bilingual local scene in Shanghai (Jing’an/Xuhui), Beijing (Sanlitun), and Chengdu.

Tinder server APIs and Facebook/Google login methods are 100% blocked on domestic Chinese Wi-Fi. On an international roaming eSIM, the app loads profiles normally, but matching is mostly limited to expats and English-speaking locals in Tier-1 cities.

Blocked on domestic broadband. Photo uploads and prompt voice clips time out on local Wi-Fi. User base is concentrated almost entirely in Shanghai and Hong Kong.