Satellite TV

As TV Satellites are in a geostationary orbit, it is not possible to receive signals from American or European Satellites. Normal Chinese TV will only give you the english language CCTV9 “propaganda”-channel. Luckily other Asian countries are in a better position and have a lot of foreign language channels. The best thing: those satellites can be received in China.

• Dream Satellite TV Package from the Philippines
  Channels: HBO Asia, CNN, ESPN, CNBC Asia, BBC World, Ben sports, Australia Network, Bloomberg, NGC, Animal planet, Cinemax, Star Movies, Star Chinese Movies, Hallmark, Star World, AXN, NGC, ETC, 2nd Avenue, MTV, EntertainmentCentral, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Animax, Star Sports, DW, TBN, JCTV, Living Asia
• HBOCN Family Package from China
  Channels: HBO, CNN, ESPN, Discovery, Cinemax, AXN, TV5, NHK, TVB Jade, BBC world, MTV, Channel Newsasia, Phoenix Movie, Star sports, TVB xinghe, Hallmark Channel, Star Movies, Bloomberg, CNBC, CCTV4, CCTV9, CCTV-Olympics, NOW,EuroSportNews, Phoenix News, Shenzhen TV Station, Celestial Movies, Macau TV, KBS World, Fashion TV, MTV China, Guangdong TV Station, Phoenix Chinese
• Sinosat 1
  This satellite owned by the Chinese government broadcasts most of the TV channels available in international hotels but is not available for individual subscription. Before 2003 hacked cards were available to watch the system illegally. After a system/encryption change it seem not to be possible anymore.
• DSTV Package from South Africa
  Channels: Supersport1,Supersport2, Supersport3, Supersport5, Supersport6, Supersport7, Supersport8, Supersport update , DD Sports, Star Movies, Hallmark, FilmAsia, ESPN, StarSports, CNN, Skynews, CNBC Asia, BBC World, Discovery, NGC, History, AnimalPlanet, FashionTV, AXN, TV5, NHK, MTV, Channel[v], CartoonNetwork

Check out hbocn.cn if you are interested in the options above.

Internet TV

There are quite a few TV channels who do life broadcasts over the internet. The quality varies but is most often impacted by the very low speed of the Chinese Internet to foreign Servers. Beeline TV has a good list of foreign language online TV stations. Some TV stations stream through the internet but will prevent you from watching the stream in china due to licensing issues. You can circumvent this bey connecting through a VPN provider in that country.

Recorded TV

Some countries offer services like an Online TV Recorder which you can program over the internet and download the videos later. These services are especially popular in Germany where even a free online tv recorder is available (cluttered with ads though): OnlineTVRecorder.com

Proxy Servers

Using a proxy server you can pipe your web-traffic through another computer before establishing the connection with your target server/website. As most proxy servers are not on a black list in China many blocked sites will become accessible. The “Great Firewall” has become better though. In some cases it will do live-content filtering and reset connections. This can’t be be prevented by using a proxy server as the content will still go unencrypted through the Chinese internet. The good point is: there are many free proxy servers you can use (although they are usually slow) and they are very easy to setup.

Free Proxy Server Listing: Proxy4Free.com

Setting up a Proxy Server in Firefox

Setting up a Proxy Server in Internet Explorer

Virtual Private Network (VPN) Tunneling

The most secure, fast and reliable solution to get uncensored internet in china is through a VPN tunnel. This method will pipe the complete outgoing network traffic (not only web (HTTP) but also email, p2p, …) through  an encrypted connection to a VPN server from where it goes to the internet. That means from an outsiders perspective you are connecting to the internet from the place of your VPN provider. You will have an IP address of that place which also leads to localized advertisements e.g. in German if you are using a VPN provider in Germany.

A VPN Provider which works extremely well in China is Relakks. The Relakks Servers are located in Sweden and good accessible from a China Telecom or China Netcom connection. It seems that the average “normal” foreign website opens even faster using it. The best thing: you can try it 30 days for free! After the 30 day trial it costs a modest 5 EUR per month or 50 EUR per year. Setup on most systems (Mac OSX and Windows) is extremely easy as there is no software required. It works like a new network adapter.

Uncensored VPN Connection using Relakks

If you do not trust your VPN provider, you can rent a root-server in a country with free internet access and use OpenVPN to be build your own VPN tunnel.

Other Options

The two options above should be the best for average users. However there are more options:

• SSH tunneling works similar to VPN tunneling but only works on specific connections basis
• Tor is a network of anonymous proxies which can hide your identity very effectively but is also very slow.
• Sometimes only the nameserver entry of particular services are censored and it might help to change to a non-chinese public nameserver like OpenDNS.
• it seems that the Great Firewall sometimes just resets the connection by sending TCP Reset packets. Experienced network administrator could configure the firewall to ignore those.

Who or Where am I?

If you want to be sure that you are connected securly before accessing any sensitive or censored information, you can check out this page. It will tell you your outside-IP, your Internet Provider and other information.