Hi all, this is a bit off-topic, but I'm researching VPN services for friends who will be visiting China. They were frustrated on their last visit by not being able to access western news sites and google. That time I set them up with mail forwarding so they could get their gmail through another provider, but this time they're looking for a better solution.
When I asked teh google, I didn't get much useful information, which was surprising at first. I'm conditioned to avoid sales-pushing sites with names like bestestvpnchina.x, and look for advice from more established sites, but after searching for awhile, I realized that there seems to be a deliberate absence of information from usually reliable sources - some coverage from news sites about attempts at blocking VPNs by China like this Techchrunch article China Continues Its Crackdown On VPN Services, but not the easy abundant access to relevant information to which I've grown accustomed.