List of Most Popular Websites Blocked in China

The year 2017 saw a notable strengthening in the internet censorship of the Chinese government. The privacy advocate messaging app, WhatsApp, was banned along with most VPN apps. On top of this is the removal of all VPN applications from its App Store in China.

Even before these moves, China’s censorship of the internet is seen to be extreme by most people. This has been derisively referred to as the “Great Firewall of China”, and a huge number of websites and applications are banned in China years ago. Perhaps the people most affected by the Great Firewall are expats, foreigners, tourists, and other people who find themselves unable to use and access websites and apps that they commonly use back home.

Here is a comprehensive list of websites banned in China, grouped according to their categories – search engines, social media platforms, messaging apps, video streaming, cloud and productivity, news websites, and email. A way to bypass this government censorship is also presented at the end of the article.

Messaging apps blocked in China

Streaming websites and apps blocked in China

Search Engines blocked in China

News and information websites blocked in China

Email blocked in China

Cloud Storage & Productivity blocked in China

How to Access Blocked Websites and Applications in China

There are a number of ways to unblock banned websites and applications in China. There are proxies, and the Tor browser, as examples.

However, the best method to bypass this heavy censorship by the Chinese government is by using a Virtual Private Network or a VPN. VPNs work by using a secure tunnel to direct your request through an unblocked server to the destination website that is blocked such as Facebook, Youtube, or CNN.

The sad news is that the Great Firewall of China is able to detect the OpenVPN protocol that most VPN providers use. As a result, more and more VPN apps are being blocked in China. However, there are still VPN providers that can unblock websites in China. You can give LimeVPN a try for as low as $1 per month.

To Wrap Up

There is certainly a long list of banned websites and apps in China, and it is important to note that most of these websites are very popular. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that 20% of the top 100 websites in terms of traffic are banned in China.

The list of banned websites and apps in China can only grow longer, if one looks at the current stand of the Chinese government when it comes to privacy of internet users. The best thing to do when travelling to China then is to equip oneself with tools that can bypass the censorship such as a reliable VPN provider such as LimeVPN.