If you’re an owner of an Android phone in China, then you may be wondering why some apps cannot be found on the Google Play store. More specifically, you can’t find apps with an option to upgrade to a Pro version. In other words, you can’t purchase Android apps in China. Sometimes, even the free version of the app are mysteriously gone. A mobile VPN won’t even help. This is due in major part to the rocky relationship between Google and China. Because Google continually fails to abide by China’s censorship laws, the CPC returns the favor by occasionally blocking Google products outright, including it’s app store. If you’re an Android user and annoyed by this inconvenience, fear not; there’s a way to circumvent this.
I should be a little more clear about purchasing apps in China. As long as there’s a Chinese SIM card in your Android phone, you cannot purchase any apps. Therefore, the logical solution is, when you want to make a purchase, swap out your Chinese SIM card and insert a non-Chinese one. It could be any SIM card, active or inactive, 3G or no 3G. Of course you won’t have any mobile data access with an inactive SIM card in your phone. The next thing you need to have is a wireless connection. This could be with your home connection or at a cafe or even the free 30 minutes at McDonalds. Once you’ve followed these steps, the Google Play app store will return to normal and you’ll have access to all apps, free or paid. And once you’ve downloaded what you want, just swap back in your China card and go about your day.
Basically, it’s quite simple to bypass the blockage so long as you have the 2 essential items: a non-Chinese SIM card and access to a WI-FI connection. One annoying thing to note though, is that apps downloaded through a non-Chinese SIM card needs to be updated the same way. This means that you need to switch SIM cards from time to time in order to receive the push updates. While quite inconvenient, I have found that apps on average update once every 2 weeks. If you set a day, once or twice a month to swap SIM cards, you can receive app updates in bulk. Hope this helps fellow oppressed Android users in China.
Koombah 