Travel · East Asia

Working from China with a Mac: internet, eSIMs and what’s blocked

Mainland China filters the internet at its borders, so a Mac that works anywhere else can lose Google, many messaging apps and a long list of Western sites the moment it joins a local network. Most of this is stable and well documented, and some of it can be planned around before you fly. Hong Kong and Macao have their own rules and aren’t covered here.

Region: East Asia
Blocked: Google, Facebook, YouTube and X are blocked¹; many foreign messaging apps, including WhatsApp³⁴, and Wikipedia in every language³.
Calls: WhatsApp calls don’t work on local networks; WeChat is the everyday app⁴.
SIM rule: A passport is enough for a SIM; up to five numbers per passport in Beijing⁶.
VPN law: VPNs must be licensed by the government¹; unlicensed ones have been banned since 2017³.

Checked 1 November 2026. Rules and blocks change, sometimes overnight. Each claim links to its source; where a source and this page differ, the source wins.

What’s blocked or restricted

China’s authorities control internet access, and some services are permanently blocked¹.

Google. The UK’s travel advice lists Google among the permanently blocked services¹, and Google’s search engine has been blocked since 2012, along with Maps, Translate, Calendar, Docs, Drive and Analytics³. On a Chinese network, plan for anything that signs in with Google not to load.
Social media and messaging. Facebook, YouTube and X are blocked¹, and most international social media and messaging platforms are blocked, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and Signal among them³. In April 2024 Apple was ordered to remove WhatsApp, Threads, Telegram and Signal from its China App Store³.
Reference and forums. Every language of Wikipedia has been blocked since April 2019, and Reddit since August 2018³.
Everything else. Other websites may be blocked from time to time, and access can be limited further around key political events and dates¹. During periods of tension, text messaging and international phone lines can be blocked too¹.

Thousands of domains are blocked at the national level, and some provinces add their own blocks³. If a site you need isn’t named here, assume it may fail and have a plan for it. Kilobat can identify signs of a network block or a service’s own regional refusal, though the result can be inconclusive. See blocked here, not down.

Calling apps

WhatsApp’s calls work only where WhatsApp itself is reachable, and on Chinese networks it isn’t³. Reporting on WhatsApp’s own features notes that people in China rely on WeChat instead⁴.

Ask the people you’ll call which app they use. Chinese colleagues and clients will usually expect WeChat.
Calls placed through your home carrier while roaming are ordinary phone calls and don’t depend on any app.
In a period of tension, international phone lines and text messages can be blocked as well¹, so agree a fallback, such as email, before an important call.

How mobile data reaches your Mac

There are three ways to get mobile data to your Mac, and they don’t behave the same.

A Chinese SIM. Your data goes out through a Chinese network, so the blocks above apply. A local number is what Chinese apps and many Wi-Fi sign-in pages expect⁷⁸.
Roaming on your home SIM. Roaming data can be routed through your home carrier⁹, but the route and service availability vary by carrier and network. Check with your provider and do not rely on access to a specific service.
A travel eSIM. Travel eSIMs often route traffic through another operator’s gateway in a third country, which may be neither home nor China⁹¹⁰. What you can reach then depends on that gateway’s country and on how the seller set it up, and their pages rarely say.

Whichever you use, your Mac shares it through the phone’s hotspot, so the Mac inherits the phone’s route to the internet. None of this changes what Chinese law says about the services you use while you’re there.

What the law says about VPNs

Online products and services, VPNs among them, need a licence from the Chinese government¹. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology banned unlicensed VPNs in 2017, and providers can’t set up a VPN without approval³.

Belgium’s foreign ministry describes using a VPN as prohibited in China².
Enforcement against individuals is uneven but real. Freedom House reports a programmer fined 200 yuan, with the income from his work confiscated, for using an “unauthorised” VPN³.
Posting or supporting political statements critical of China can be treated as illegal¹, whatever connection carries it.

Companies with a real need for cross-border access use licensed services. If your employer requires its VPN, ask its IT team how it’s provided in China before you travel.

SIM and eSIM registration

China requires real identity for phone and internet service. Its Cybersecurity Law obliges operators to verify a user’s identity before providing network access, phone service or messaging⁵.

In Beijing, any person with a valid passport can apply for up to five SIM cards, each with its own number, at an operator’s service hall or at counters in Beijing’s two airports⁶.
You present the passport in person. Beijing’s guide suggests a translation app or a Chinese-speaking friend and calling the branch first to check that it serves foreign nationals⁶.
A travel eSIM gives you data, but no Chinese number. Government guidance published in 2026 acknowledges that apps demanding a code to a Chinese number have locked visitors out, and asks operators to make service easier for foreigners⁸.

Hotel and café Wi-Fi

Because network access is tied to identity⁵, public Wi-Fi in China usually opens on a sign-in page rather than a password alone.

Airports are improving for visitors. Beijing Daxing’s free Wi-Fi accepts a photo of your passport’s information page, with a mobile number, a kiosk or WeChat as the other options⁷.
Elsewhere, expect the page to ask for a mobile number and text it a code. Some systems work only with Chinese numbers⁸, so ask the front desk how foreign guests sign in.
Sign-in pages are ordinary web pages. If yours never appears, see why the Wi-Fi sign-in page doesn’t show.

Prepare your Mac before you go

Set the Mac up at home, where everything still loads.

Download installers, updates, documents and offline copies of anything stored in Google’s services before you go, since those may not load on a Chinese network¹.
For two-factor sign-in, an authenticator app works offline. Time-based codes are calculated on your own device from a shared secret and the clock¹¹, so they don’t need a network, a text message or Google.
Apple Account codes appear on your trusted Apple devices¹², which helps if texts to your home number are slow while roaming. Sign in to what you need before you leave anyway.
Download offline maps on your iPhone, but check first; offline maps are only available in some regions¹³.

Where Kilobat helps

Kilobat checks your connection and the service to help you investigate what may be wrong.

Is it them or me, or blocked here? Kilobat checks your connection and the service’s status page. It may identify signs of a network block or a service’s own regional refusal; results can be inconclusive. See blocked here, not down and “not available in your region” answers.
Hotel Wi-Fi sign-in. Kilobat can notice a sign-in page and offers a button to open it. With Pro, it can warn before a session expires once it has learned its usual length. See hotel Wi-Fi login on a Mac.
Leak test. The VPN leak test checks for selected DNS, IPv6 and UDP leaks. Passing these checks does not prove that all traffic uses the VPN. See proxies and VPNs.
Hotspot data saver and data packs. Roaming and travel eSIM data is expensive. The Travel profile holds back backups and updaters on the phone’s hotspot, and a budget that starts over only when you reset it matches a fixed data pack. See save hotspot data.
Call reports. Home-routed roaming adds distance. After each call, Kilobat says whether it froze and why. See video calls and Kilobat for digital nomads.

Guides for the road: Wi-Fi login page does not appear on a Mac, Homebrew or npm downloads fail on a Mac, Mac uses Personal Hotspot data in the background, Set a monthly data budget that resets on renewal day and See if traffic goes through your VPN.

Questions

Will my home SIM reach Google in China?

It depends. Roaming data can be routed through your home carrier⁹, but routing and availability vary by operator and network. Check with your provider and don’t rely on a specific service being reachable.

Can I sign in to hotel Wi-Fi without a Chinese number?

Sometimes. Airports such as Beijing Daxing accept a passport photo⁷, but some systems send codes only to Chinese numbers⁸. Ask at the front desk.

Sources

Checked on 1 November 2026. Government, regulator and travel-advice pages come first where they exist; news outlets and research cover what officials don’t publish, such as which services are blocked. This page explains the situation; it isn’t legal advice.

Know whether it’s the network, the country or you

Kilobat is a Mac menu-bar app that checks your own line, the Wi-Fi sign-in page and the service’s status page, guards a hotspot’s data and reports on every call.

Download for Mac ↓

$ brew install seifip/kilobat/kilobat