Many people use vpn openly in china for business and gaming. Its sort of allowed. Source : my Chinese mates
Also you can get roaming SIM cards or even eSIMs, which connect to APNs overseas.
You can also get Alibaba Cloud private networking connection between a region inside of China and a region outside. They use private lines so there's no GFW involved. My understanding is that you need an international real name verified account to do this, but after that you basically have an uncensored line that's also much more stable than connections that have to go through the GFW. I know of a US company that uses this to connect their Chinese workers to their central office, and again it's fully legal once you get an ICP license.
Especially from what they have been learning about generating viral from tiktok (the ADHD Dopamine Addicts in the growing adolescent brain is a gold mine)....
But one interesting thing I noticed on tiktok and reddit r/artisanvideos and others for example - is these agrarian-crafty-chipster videos.
Like the soft music, the beautiful landscapes, the cute dog in the background and all the nice, clean village-esque looking surrounding as some master craftsman makes bamboo mats, or tofu, or paper etc...
They look highly polished PR videos that one might see at an amusement park showing the "simple but accomplished life in china - look how elegantly crafty these simple folk are"
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However - that doesn't mean they aren't making incredibly authoritarian tools disguised as benefits for society. and AI will engulf their tool set and accelerate. Just make sure to leave some bread, circuses and sex to distract the frogs from the temp in the cauldron.