It’s been a long time since Hong Kong lived in calmness and peace. The second ‘heat’ wave is coming and you must stay secure. Please, use a VPN for private communications for your own safety and do not fall into the governments hands by picking a wrong VPN. These listed VPN providers are definitely not tied to China and even have some good deals to offer:
NordVPN. It’s based in Panama, so it’s outside 5 and 14 eyes alliances, meaning it doesn’t have to obey to mandatory data retention laws. That’s why it can offer a strict no-logs policy, which is super important and will guarantee you security. Click the link (https://nordvpn.com/coupon/deal/?coupon=hksummer) to get their latest deal - $3.49/month with 2 year deal (you save 70%).
PerfectPrivacy. This one is based in Germany, also a good VPN provider, though little bit more expensive. Their best deal at the moment is with 31% discount -$8.95/month with a 2 year deal.
Most importantly, do not try to save money by using free VPNs, not only it’s not safe in general but most of them are also controlled by China. Some of the VPNs that you should definitely avoid:
Setting up your own VPN is not difficult but I would not encourage it, especially in this case. Without knowing all of the nuances, you might miss something crucial and leave your data exposed tbh. I’d say NordVPN is a good one to consider - it has good speeds, a transparent bug bounty program and works in China. Not many other VPNs offer that.
Just don’t use free VPNs, this article just goes to show that you can rarely trust free VPN providers
TLDR. Be prepared to spend some time when choosing a VPN provider. Their qualities vary and to make things worse, most of them are under the control of a handful of companies.
Even better to set up your own on AWS or somewhere, if the GFW is implemented suddenly for “National Security” reasons the ones you listed won’t work anyway
You should choose a VPN, which has a proven ability to bypass the great China firewall (just in case of new restrictions). There are 2 trusted VPNs working in CH: NordVPN + ExpressVPN (this one is more expensive).