Behind the Great Firewall (A report from China)

Went to China for work and stayed for about 5 weeks. I brought my Project Fi phone with me. Since the connectivity in China was a big reason for me to try out Project Fi, I thought I'd share my data point with everyone else.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get hard numbers on speeds and etc. due to SpeedTest not working very well behind the Great Firewall. So we'll just have to make do with my subjective observations.

• China Unicom was the only carrier I was able to get 4G access on. I don't know for sure, but if I recall correctly, Unicom uses the same bands as AT&T and some other US carriers. I did not have luck getting 4G with China Mobile, or any other provider that I tested.
• I was able to get 4G the whole time I was there after my phone registered on the network. The network registration seemed to take a while, i.e. longer than a minute, but this may also have been due to my trying to test the connectivity the moment the plane landed.
• Location wise, I can confirm that Beijing Capital International Airport has good 4G signal all over. I also had no issues in the Shanghai area; primarily Pudong, but also a few trips to Puxi.
• The Great Firewall. It seems that the Project Fi VPN (which it automatically uses to connect to Fi services, iirc) is able to punch through the Great Firewall. However, it seems to only work on Data, i.e. when on Wifi, the VPN is not active.
  • I had no issues with accessing GMail, Google Play Store, etc. via 4G, but speeds were considerably reduced, compared to non-blocked services and sites I accessed via the internet browser. So Google and other blocked services are usable on 4G data with Fi, but are much slower, 2G or 3G speeds.
  • Same story with Reddit and Imgur. Generally, there are no issues with accessing Reddit or Imgur over there, but about 50-75% of the time, Imgur is blocked by the Firewall. Was able to access blocked content on 4G Data, although the speed is slower.
  • I also had a freak incident where Google Photos decided to upload ~1.5GB of pictures on data, even though it is explicitly set to only use Wifi. I think after a month of not being able to upload due to lack of connectivity, it got desperate and uploaded on 4G data, since that was the only time it was able to see the Google servers.
• Have to keep in mind that your phone number is still based in USA. This makes the telephone basically useless. However, WeChat works really well, and is super prevalent.
  • I ended up using WeChat and Uber on my Project Fi phone, and got a local sim on a second phone for actual phone calls and text messages.
• I racked up about 1GB a week of usage on average. Fairly heavy Reddit browsing, checking out a lot of Imgur and other picture links. Youtube and Gfycat generally unusable unless I was willing to wait a long time for it to load, Youtube is a lot worse than Gfycat on this front for obvious reasons.
  • I'd attribute this large amount of data usage to having to use Fi Data to bypass the Great Firewall.
  • Fi Data through the Great Firewall is slower than non-blocked stuff, but it is significantly faster than jumping over the wall with other VPNs.

TL;DR: 4G connectivity on China Unicom. Google apps/services/etc. are able to bypass Great Firewall when using 4G Data, but NOT on WiFi.