China is known for its internet restrictions – so much so that the term “The Great Firewall” is known to almost all of us. Any website that the government deems to contain sensitive information, whether for political, social or financial reasons, can be blocked from the eyes of China’s population. Of course, that’s not a situation that any savvy internet user needs to put up with, because a Virtual Private Network is a service that can bypass the censorship and has never been declared illegal by the Chinese government – and nor has any citizen ever been prosecuted for using one.
When you’re choosing a VPN provider for Mac OS X in China, you have two separate sets of considerations to bear in mind. You need a Mac VPN in China that is compatible with your computer, and you also need one that’s strong enough to break through the Great Firewall.
Finding The Best Mac OS X VPN For China
Finding a VPN that will work with your Mac OS X is already going to limit you, because not all VPN providers are able to work alongside that operating system. This is largely the fault of Apple’s curmudgeonly refusal to allow anyone to write software for its systems until relatively recently – even VPN services are still rushing to catch up. When you’re looking for a VPN for Mac OS X to work in China, you’ll want to check that the software was written specifically for it. Otherwise, it may be clunky to use or not quite so secure as you’ll need to get round the Great Firewall.
Finding The Best VPN For China That Will Work On A Mac OS X
Once you’ve found a VPN service that works with your Mac OS X, you’ll then want to find one that is still able to work in China. Some services have been blocked within China already, but there are still many available that can help you. You will need to be sure that the service does not only offer PPTP as its encryption protocol, because it’s not strong enough to bypass the blocking – you’ll want a China VPN that uses a more secure protocol, such as openVPN. You will also need one with servers outside China, but in a country that shares a language you can speak (in case you’re navigated to foreign language versions of certain websites).
To help you match up the Venn diagram of VPN services for both Mac OS X and China, our experts have done the hard work on your behalf. Below is a comparison table with our picks of the very best available.
| Rank | Provider | Starting Price | Money Back |
Visit Provider |
| 1 | ExpressVPN | $6.67 /Month | 30 Days |  |
| 2 | Hidemyass | $6.55/ Month | 30 Days | |
| 3 | iPVanish | $10.00/Month | 7 Days | |
| 4 | StrongVPN | $21/ 3 Months | 7 Days | |
| 5 | VyprVPN | $14.95/Month | 7 Days | |
