> How, if ever, you felt the lack of information freedom?

Never really thought about it except those times I forgot to pay my VPN

> Is it so polluted as it looks?

Cleaner than my home town in Scandinavia. Was living in South part of China.

Had a personal VPN back then so I never had any problem there.

Felt very polluted in Shanghai when I first moved there. Lived in Dalian which is one of the cleaner cities and had no issues. Moved to Beijing (before the olympics) and experienced no real issues either. I've lived in much more polluted cities since then.

Just back to Canada from China a week ago.Commercial VPN providers like StrongVPN, PureVPN are blocked now. But there's no problem using your own VPN or any private company VPN if that's an option.

Environment is improving in general. Now local governments would give up economic benefit in exchange for environment protection which is quite different mindset than a decade ago.