WhatsApp, Google and staying
reachable in China.

Some of your everyday apps are restricted in mainland China. That sounds dramatic, but travellers have two clean, pre-arranged solutions and one messy one. Here is the whole picture, without drama and without pretending everything just works.

Does WhatsApp work in China?

Not on Chinese networks — but yes, easily, with one of two pre-arranged fixes. WhatsApp, Google, Instagram and YouTube are blocked on local SIM and Wi-Fi. They work normally when your phone uses EU/UK SIM roaming or a travel eSIM that routes data internationally. Last verified August 2026.

Which apps are restricted in China, and which work fine?

Blocked on Chinese networks: Google (Search, Maps, Gmail), WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook/Messenger, YouTube and many Western news sites. Working fine: iMessage and FaceTime, Apple Maps, Microsoft services (Outlook, Bing, Office), Spotify mostly, and airline and banking apps. Alipay, WeChat and their taxi and metro apps work on any network.

• Happy surprise: Apple Maps is genuinely good in China.
• Variable: hotel Wi-Fi quality; some apps work one day and stall the next. Plan for resilience, not perfection.

What is the best way to get online in China?

Two clean options, set up before you fly. The cleanest: your EU/UK SIM on roaming — traffic routes via your home carrier, so Google and WhatsApp simply work, no VPN needed. The best value for a week or more: a travel eSIM with international routing, installed and tested before departure. Mainland-bought SIMs do not open restricted sites.

Solution 1 (recommended): your European SIM on roaming

This is the zero-effort, zero-grey-area option, and what we recommend for most travellers. Check your carrier’s China roaming pack before you fly: many EU carriers offer affordable Asia packs, and UK travellers should check post-Brexit terms before relying on it.

Solution 2: travel eSIM with international routing

Travel eSIMs (the kind that route data via Hong Kong or elsewhere abroad) give you local-style data prices and open internet, and work brilliantly as a second line alongside your home SIM. The routing is what matters, not the SIM itself.

How should I set up a dual-SIM phone for China?

Two lines, two jobs. Keep your home SIM in for voice and SMS — bank 3-D Secure codes and card-blocking warnings arrive there — with roaming on but data roaming off. Let the eSIM do all the data, installed and activated before you fly. Configure both at home; SMS codes behave badly when attempted jet-lagged at arrivals.

Every iPhone and flagship Android sold in Europe in the last few years runs a physical SIM and an eSIM side by side. Two practical notes: eSIM activation needs Wi-Fi and a QR scan, hence at home; and that home-number SMS code is also what Alipay and WeChat Pay ask for when you bind a foreign card — one roaming switch covers both jobs.

The failure this prevents is the single most common one we see: bank texts the code to a phone sitting in airplane mode, binding fails, and the first coffee in China is paid with damp euro notes. Five minutes at home makes it impossible.

Is using a VPN in China legal for tourists?

It sits in an established grey zone. No Chinese law publicly bans personal VPN use by travellers, while unapproved VPN provision is restricted and enforcement targets providers, not tourists. In practice, millions of visitors use VPNs every year without incident — but we don’t present this as a legal opinion, and we always set up a roaming/eSIM backbone that needs no VPN at all.

Do you need a VPN in China? Not with us.

No. Before you fly, we set up your EU/UK roaming pack or a travel eSIM together on a short call — your traffic routes internationally, so Google, WhatsApp and the rest work from the moment you land, with nothing to install and nothing to troubleshoot. Our guides carry pocket Wi-Fi as backup on the day. VPN use by travellers is a widely practised grey zone, not officially sanctioned — useful to know about, unnecessary to need.

If you still want a VPN anyway: the three things that actually matter

VPNs sit in a grey zone for travellers, and we do not provide or configure them — but if you decide you want one as an extra layer, install it at home (the app stores are not accessible inside China). We deliberately don’t name providers here — performance shifts month to month, and what is fast in a Shanghai hotel can stall on a Guangzhou SIM. What we tell guests who choose this path to check, in this order:

• Current China-specific results, not marketing. Look for testing done inside China in the last few months, on both hotel Wi-Fi and mobile data — not speed-test screenshots from outside the firewall.
• Obfuscation, not just speed. The providers that keep working in China are the ones whose traffic does not look like VPN traffic. A fast app that is easily detected is worse than a steady one.
• Two providers on different networks. The point of installing two is resilience: if one is throttled on a given hotel network, the other often still connects. Install both at home, because the app stores are not accessible once you land.

For current, independently-tested provider performance — including the full methodology on hotel Wi-Fi and mobile data — see Unusual Nomad’s VPN testing. We link to it as an independent source, not as our own recommendation of any single provider.

We don’t sell VPN advice as a legal opinion either — which is why the roaming/eSIM backbone above comes first and the VPN stays the backup, not the plan.

Cheat-sheet: what you need, what works

None of this should be figured out at 11pm in a Beijing hotel room. The 30-minute setup call is part of every journey: roaming pack confirmed, eSIM installed and tested, offline maps downloaded. You arrive already connected.

That setup call is part of every journey we run — connectivity, payments, the first 24 hours. If you’d rather have it done for you, see the ten-day Classic China journey.