When my daughter was in Beijing last year in school, virtually all of the U.S. students in her class used VPNs to access Youtube and other american content. I got the impression they were quite common amongst the Beijingers too.
Every hotel I've stayed at in China that caters to Westerners had a VPN in place. You could check your Gmail at the hotel but not outside of it (unless you had your own VPN).
Ive never seen a vpn in shanghai or Beijing, while I get them by default in Guangzhou. They definitely aren't legal for the hotel to provide (if you setup a conference in Beijing, they'll deny this service as an option), but china isn't really a rule of law country (laws are only Enforced selectively).
This is because historically most Chinese revolts and movements started with the inlanders getting frustrated with the amount of trade the coast enjoys.
People in Beijing and Shanghai have it much better and do not have much reason to cause problems bad for business.
Not to mention Xinjiang. By the time I got out there communication was basically a black hole. Out there apparently the police were actually enforcing the no-VPN rule kicking locals off the internet for extended periods of time.
every other web page you see (as a foreigner) from China seems to have a VPN ad on it, and of course you can roll your own. Strangely if you roam on your phone (or mine at least) there's no need you get unfiltered data .... and most importantly Google rather than (ugh) bing
