Tunneling Under the Great Firewall?

An anonymous reader writes "I am traveling to China in the near future, and needless to say as a Slashdot reader I am going to require access to the Internet. The whole, unadulterated, unfiltered Internet. Also needless to say, I am very leery of the government there (my lack of a nickname on this submission being testament to that). I will only be there for a few weeks, and will not be using the computer for much of that time, so I don't want to shell out a lot of money to a VPN service. However I also don't want to be hindered by extremely slow speeds such as those provided by the Tor network. I have experience implementing Web servers and work fairly often with Linux; however, many of my friends who also face the same dilemma don't. What would be the most cost-effective (free is best) method for me to subvert the Great Firewall during my travels while maintaining sufficient anonymity and enjoying sufficient speed?"

Comments

Tor, maybe?

[stakovahflow]

I am thinking that maybe a Tor client would be useful, but I do not know if this is allowed in China...

Anyone else know?

--Stak

Are you out of your fucking mind?

[russotto]

You're going to a country with a ruthless authoritarian dictatorship, and which further is both the darling of the US government and willing and able to stand up to it if need be, and you're asking how to subvert one of the institutions beloved to its leaders? Here's an idea for you: don't. Best if you just don't go to China at all, but if you're going to go, don't do anything which might result in you being imprisoned indefinitely, particularly when the best the US embassy will do is put in some token protest.

True, by most reports, the government doesn't particularly care if foreigners evade the firewall. But if they change their mind, or if they think you're helping Chinese people do to the same, you could be in the shit in no time at all. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life at hard labor in a foreign country?