Tailscale could be blocked by the GFW [1]. I guess that's because it uses a central beacon node?
Also they are built on WireGuard, which is not obfuscated, so they can be detected by DPI?
[1] https://forum.tailscale.com/t/does-tailscale-work-in-mainlan...
The main issue with living in China is the fact that the connections to the outside world are so clogged that using something like Youtube is often so slow that it's not even worth trying; that was the case in the Beijing area between 2016-2018 at least.
It would be amazing if Tailscale can use ExpressVPN kind of services for handshaking so that it can work inside the GFW.
I've heard those conspiracy theories, but to be honest I just accepted that everything was monitored when I was in China anyway. Installing something like Wechat/微信 basically gives tencent permission to everything that's on your (Android) phone anyway. To me, the VPN was solely about granting access to what was otherwise blocked, not about privacy.
Everything except for Tailscale (and possibly ZeroTier) on that list can be entirely self-hosted.