How to reach Claude from mainland ChinaTwo blocks, and only one of them is the network

Claude does not load on an ordinary connection in mainland China, and the usual explanation — the country filters international traffic — is true but incomplete. Clearing the filter is necessary and it is not sufficient.

The second condition is Anthropic's own: it publishes a list of the countries and regions where Claude is offered, and mainland China is not on it. Neither is Hong Kong, which is the exit almost everyone picks. Both conditions have to be satisfied at once, and the order in which you diagnose them saves a great deal of time.

• Block one is the route out of the country; block two is Anthropic's regions list
• Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau are all absent from that list
• Only 3 of the 7 providers we track publish any location in mainland China — and a server inside the filter is on the wrong side of it anyway
• Japan is the exit that satisfies both conditions and has the most cities behind it
• Install and sign in before you travel; provider sites are hard to reach from inside

Block one: the route out of the country

Mainland China filters international traffic at the network level. Claude fails before the request reaches Anthropic at all, which is why no account setting and no app update makes a difference — the problem is on the path, not on the account.

The filtering does two separate things, and the second is what catches VPNs. It blocks addresses and names outright, which is what stops a service loading. And it inspects the shape of traffic, which is what stops a tunnel whose handshake is recognisable regardless of where it is going.

That is why provider choice matters more here than anywhere else we write about. Of the seven providers we track, five publish a feature list, and four of those five name obfuscation — traffic shaped to look like ordinary HTTPS. NordVPN calls them obfuscated servers, Surfshark calls it Camouflage Mode, Mullvad lists obfuscation and censorship circumvention, and Private Internet Access lists obfuscation. Windscribe does not name it.

Block two: mainland China is not on Anthropic's list

Anthropic publishes a page titled “Supported countries & regions”, covering both commercial API access and Claude.ai. We read it on 20 September 2026 and counted 183 entries. Mainland China is not one of them, and neither is Hong Kong or Macau.

We checked by extracting the entries and comparing them one at a time, with a control — Honduras — included so that a run returning “not listed” for China could be distinguished from a run that was simply not reading the list properly.

Read from Anthropic's own page by VPN LIFE on 20 September 2026, item by item rather than by searching the page for a word. The last row is a control: an entry we expected to find, included to show the comparison itself is working.

This is what makes China different from an ordinary geo-block. Getting traffic out of the country is a network problem with a network answer. Landing somewhere Anthropic serves is a separate question, and it removes the most obvious exit from the table.

Hong Kong is the wrong exit for Claude, specifically

Hong Kong is the shortest hop out of mainland China and every provider we track publishes a location there. For most services it is the sensible choice. For Claude it is not, because Hong Kong is itself absent from Anthropic's list.

People clear the first block, land in Hong Kong, see the same refusal, and conclude the VPN failed. It did not — it delivered them to a region that is not on the list. We go through that in detail on why Claude does not open in Hong Kong.

Why “a VPN with servers in China” is backwards

The search people run is for a provider with servers in China. It is the wrong shape of question twice over. A server inside mainland China sits on the same side of the filter you are on, so it does not provide a route out. And mainland China is not on Anthropic's list, so even a working connection to it would not satisfy the second condition.

For completeness, here is what the providers actually publish across the region. The contrast is the point.

Counted by VPN LIFE from each provider's own published server list, recollected every day.

Mainland China is the thinnest entry in that table by a wide margin, and its neighbours are among the best covered places in the world. Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are covered by all seven providers we track; Taiwan and South Korea by six. The choice of exit is not constrained by availability — it is constrained by Anthropic's list, which removes Hong Kong and Macau from that row of options.

Japan is the exit that satisfies both conditions

Japan is on Anthropic's list, is a short route from mainland China, and has more cities behind it than anywhere else nearby. Taiwan is also on the list and is a reasonable second choice.

Locations each provider publishes in its own server list, recounted daily by VPN LIFE. A published location is not a promise that a given server is reachable from where you are right now.

Cities matter more than provider count here. When an address stops answering — and in China addresses stop answering — the cheap fix is a different city in the same country, and that option exists only with providers publishing two or more. Four of the seven do in Japan.

Work through it in three layers, in this order

When Claude does not open, there are three independent things that can be wrong. Checking them in the wrong order wastes the most time, because fixing layers two and three does nothing while layer one is unsatisfied.

• Layer 1 — the exit region. Is the country you connected to on Anthropic's list? Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China are not.
• Layer 2 — the address you actually have. Not what the app says: what an address-checking page says. Automatic server selection frequently lands somewhere other than where you meant.
• Layer 3 — the session. A page opened before the tunnel came up, or a site's stored data, can hold the earlier verdict. Reopen in a fresh tab after connecting.
• Only then change city, and only after that change provider.
• The account's registration country is a record rather than an address, and no VPN alters it.

Set it up before you travel

This is the single most common failure and it happens before departure. Provider websites are themselves hard to reach from inside mainland China, so signing up, downloading and signing in has to be finished while you still have an open connection.

Do the whole thing end to end before you go: subscribe, install on every device you will carry, sign in on each one, connect to Japan, and open Claude. “Subscribed” and “verified working” are different states, and only the second one is any use to you on arrival.

• Subscribe and install before departure — not on arrival
• Sign in on every device while the connection is still open
• Turn on obfuscation if the app offers it; it is usually off by default
• Turn on automatic reconnection so a dropped tunnel does not silently fall back
• Test the whole path — connect to Japan, then open Claude — before you fly
• Many long-term residents keep two providers, because a filter that changes without notice takes one of them out at a time

Speed is rarely the problem here, and we measured it

Every VPN site says a tunnel costs you speed. Almost none of them say how much. We measured it by hand rather than repeating a claim: 14 cities, 46 paired runs, comparing NordVPN and Surfshark against the same raw line in the same session. In the 11 cities where we also measured the bare line, the share that survived the tunnel ranged from 40% to 90%.

Measured by VPN LIFE. Raw-line figures are rounded to the nearest 10 Mbps. Percentages are the share of the raw line that survived.

• 14 cities, 46 paired runs, measured by hand
• 11 of those cities also have the bare line measured
• 40% to 90% of the raw line survived
• We only name a winner in 4 cities — the rest have too few runs

The spread between cities is larger than the spread between providers. In London roughly nine tenths of the line survived on both services; in Tokyo it was closer to half. That is worth knowing before you blame the provider: "this VPN is slow" is usually "this route is slow".

We only call a winner in a city when we have five or more paired runs there and the gap is at least 10%. That threshold is met in 4 of the 14 cities — Tokyo and Los Angeles, where NordVPN averaged ahead, and London and New York, where the two were level. In the remaining ten cities we publish the numbers and say the sample is too small, rather than ranking on one run.

The VPN providers we track, and what each publishes in Japan

We rank on what we can check. Each of the five below publishes a location in Japan; the tables are our own counts and the providers' own published terms, not a summary of their marketing.

ExpressVPN: the widest spread of cities

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN publishes more multi-city countries than anyone else in our set — 11 countries where you can pick between two or more locations, including 56 in the United States, 7 in the United Kingdom, 6 in Australia and 4 in Japan. If your problem is a blocked address rather than a missing country, that spread is the thing that gets you out of it. It is the most expensive option here, and it is the one we would pick for streaming.

Go to ExpressVPN

NordVPN: the largest country list, and the one we measured

NordVPN

NordVPN covers more countries than anything else we track. It is also one of the two services we measured ourselves, so the retention figures above are its actual numbers rather than a claim. It operates from Panama, has been audited by Deloitte, allows 10 simultaneous connections, and lists obfuscated servers and a kill switch among its features — the two things that matter where VPN traffic is filtered.

Go to NordVPN

Surfshark: unlimited devices, and level with NordVPN in half our tests

Surfshark

Surfshark is the other service in our own measurements. In London and New York it was level with NordVPN; in Tokyo and Los Angeles it trailed by 11% and 17%. It places no limit on simultaneous connections, which makes it the sensible choice for a household rather than a person. Audited by Deloitte, operating from the Netherlands, with Camouflage Mode for networks that filter VPN traffic.

Go to Surfshark

CyberGhost: the longest money-back window, with a catch

CyberGhost

CyberGhost's 45-day money-back guarantee is the longest here, and it is the reason it appears on most lists. Read the condition: 45 days applies to the six-month and two-year plans, and the monthly plan gets 14 days. It publishes 10 multi-city countries, with 11 locations in the United States, but only a single city in Japan — so it is a weaker choice if Japanese services are your target.

Go to CyberGhost

Private Internet Access: unlimited connections, US jurisdiction

Private Internet Access

PIA places no limit on devices and publishes an Advanced Kill Switch, obfuscation, multi-hop and port forwarding. Its no-logs claim has been audited by Deloitte Audit Romania. The trade-off is jurisdiction: it operates from the United States, which some readers will rule out on principle. We list it because the rest of the record is strong and because it is one of only four providers with two or more cities in Japan.

Go to Private Internet Access

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to use a VPN in China?

Regulations dating from 1996 prohibit connecting to the international internet other than through government-approved channels, and the text covers individuals as well as organisations. The penalties set out are administrative rather than criminal — warnings, suspension of the connection, and a fine of up to 15,000 yuan. Reported enforcement has concentrated on people selling or supplying access rather than on individuals using one. This is not legal advice.

Should I look for a VPN with servers in China?

No, and it is the most common wrong turn. A server inside mainland China is on the same side of the filter you are on, so it is not a route out. Only 3 of the 7 providers we track publish any location there in the first place.

Will connecting to Hong Kong work?

It may clear the first block and it cannot clear the second. Hong Kong is not on Anthropic's published list, so Claude refuses a connection arriving from there. Use Japan or Taiwan.

Does this apply to the Claude API as well as Claude.ai?

Yes. Anthropic's page states that it covers commercial API access and Claude.ai, and publishes a single list for both.

Is Gemini the same?

No. Google's published list for the Gemini web app includes Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan with no qualifier, and mainland China with one attached. The two services give different answers to the same question — we compare them on our page about Gemini in China.

Can I use a free VPN for this?

Usually not, and the reason is measurable rather than moral. Even on paid services we measured, between 10% and 60% of the raw line disappears into the tunnel — in Tokyo a 780 Mbps line came out at roughly half. Free tiers add a data cap and a much smaller server list on top of that. They also have to earn money somewhere, and where the product is free the revenue usually comes from the traffic itself.

Will it slow my connection down?

Yes, and we have measured how much: across 14 cities and 46 paired runs, between 40% and 90% of the raw line survived the tunnel. The variation between cities is wider than the variation between providers — London kept about 90% on both services we tested, Tokyo about half. If a VPN feels slow, the route is a more likely explanation than the provider.

What is a VPN, in one paragraph?

A VPN is an encrypted connection between your device and a server run by the provider. Everything you send goes through that tunnel, so the network you are sitting on sees only an encrypted link to one address, and the sites you open see the server's address rather than yours. That is the entire mechanism; the differences between providers are about where the servers are, how fast the route is, and what the provider keeps.

Conclusion

Two conditions, not one. Get a route out of the country, and arrive somewhere on Anthropic's list — which rules out the exit most people pick first.

Japan satisfies both and has the most cities to fall back on. Do the whole setup before you fly, and test it end to end rather than assuming a subscription is the same thing as a working connection.

Every count on this page is our own: the two official lists were read item by item on 20 September 2026, and the provider locations are recollected every day. The files are published as open data under CC BY 4.0, and the method — including what the numbers do not prove — is on how we test.