Is ExpressVPN owned by China?

Is it illegal to download a VPN in China?

By James.

? China's 'Great Firewall' keeps people from accessing sites like Twitter, Youtube, Amazon and Facebook. This can lead to people wanting to access information that might be unapproved for the country they're in. This is because government entities like the Chinese government view such sites as subversive of their communist ideologies. But are people with VPNs breaking any laws when they surf abroad or download such programs?

It's hard to be certain what rules apply when someone is downloading a VPN, but many of them have probably come across at least one article on the Internet that has told them that such acts are illegal. However, this is most likely due to the fact that it's only illegal if you can't provide proper reasons why you're downloading the software. Here's how it works in practice.

Does It Matter? If you're using the VPN to stream video content online, then there may be issues. Streaming legal content, with VPN, is against the law in the UK, but a lot of people use VPNs to access sites like Netflix and Playback TV. Such sites are blocked inside China for good reason, but there's nothing that says you can't use your VPN abroad to access such content. It all depends on the exact reason you're downloading the VPN software. Is it a personal reason? Or does it have something to do with what you're doing on the Internet in China?

The Rule of Law. According to Chinese law, the internet is open to all as long as you abide by a particular set of rules, or else you could be accused of disturbing public order or picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The government has very clear instructions about what people can and cannot do with regard to the internet, and they expect all internet users to follow these rules. It's pretty much impossible to find out what the exact rules are without getting an official ruling, but it's pretty much safe to assume that people are going to go to jail if they break these rules.

Is ExpressVPN owned by China?

The site isn't just the name of a company that sells VPN services; it's the country's most popular brand and the most important brand for a tech company on the mainland.

You may not have heard of ExpressVPN before, but if you're in China, you've certainly come across it on your smartphone. The brand has become synonymous with the Chinese market and has had more than 50 million users in China since 2026.

With a recent report suggesting that the brand might have ties to the country, I decided to ask the company whether it's owned by the Chinese government. It's one of the few issues that could cause serious damage to the brand, so ExpressVPN is taking steps to confirm the rumors, to dispel them, and even to correct the reports that the company has ties to China.

ExpressVPN: Connecting China to the rest of the world. In the 1990s, the Chinese government started to see the Internet as a challenge to its tight control over its citizens. This view wasn't just fueled by paranoia; many saw it as a direct threat to the Communist Party's power. This was an understandable concern, as the early version of the Internet was a tool for activists and dissidents to communicate in ways that would have been impossible before. But the government saw the Internet as a tool for terrorism, and began cracking down online content.

This meant that in China, all the things that were happening in the rest of the world became harder to access. It's easy to see how this policy has worked; according to Alexa, the U.S. Internet-usage data site, there are just 3.5 billion monthly active users in the entire world, but more than 50 million of them are based in China.

That number could just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to China's usage of the Internet. In 2026, a report published by a research firm found that Chinese web users spent 2.6 billion hours of their time online during the year, meaning that most of them were using some type of VPN.

Why is ExpressVPN not working in China?

China has a population of more than 1.

3 billion people (1/7th of the global population) and most are forced to use the Internet through the Great Firewall, which has a complete grip on how the internet is viewed in China. In many cases there is even a Chinese user account in place as a proxy into the internet.

It is very difficult to run VPN services in China unless you have access to a partner in the country or an agreement with your regional Chinese telecom provider. However, that isn't always an option.

When you use ExpressVPN in China you still want it to work, but when it doesn't this might be one of the reasons why. Here are some explanations for the problems.

What can cause DNS blocking in China? DNS blocking is a common method used in the Great Firewall of China. They are able to filter the DNS request being sent by your computer in order to allow specific domains that they feel like using. Most often it is associated with VPN blocking.

When you visit ExpressVPN on the website you see that there are no DNS leaks, but the fact that you aren't able to connect means that something happened between your computer and the VPN server which caused the problem. There are multiple situations when they can happen, these include: Your ISP blocking requests from the VPN server. Network issues. Your VPN server being temporarily blocked. Any one of these three things can interfere with your connection and cause a problem at that moment in time. ExpressVPN knows this so they check their DNS records every 10 minutes to ensure that you are able to access them every single time.

However, in China all DNS requests are going to the censored domain. ExpressVPN is unable to resolve that IP address because they haven't been granted a DNS block. Therefore we assume that one of the other reasons has occurred.

ExpressVPN does not provide a DNS IP-solution that will resolve for every country on Earth. Therefore they choose to only provide one IP-solution per country that they support.

Why does this problem occur only in China? The short answer is that there is limited availability in this area of the world. Most users that have this issue are in the region where China is geographically located.

Can I download ExpressVPN in China?

Yes.

You can download ExpressVPN to a computer and laptop which allows you to use a VPN to unblock the internet in China. But we recommend to download it from a website that's outside of China so that your online traffic is not tracked. Please click on Download ExpressVPN at the bottom of this page to download ExpressVPN on your computer and laptop.

Is ExpressVPN legal in China? There is nothing wrong in ExpressVPN in China. You just need to bypass Chinese Great Firewall by using ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is legal because it uses our special servers to bypass China's Great Firewall. ExpressVPN has an excellent reputation for security, privacy and customer support.

How to unblock websites in China using ExpressVPN? Click on Access the Website at the bottom of this page to enter China. Click on Unblock Chinese VPN. Now, choose the site you want to access from the list.

Does ExpressVPN have special servers for Chinese users? We do. We have an ExpressVPN Cloud that offers Chinese users unique access to our best security and servers. Our Chinese ExpressVPN Cloud is a high-speed server network used by ExpressVPN in China.

What is ExpressVPN Cloud? ExpressVPN Cloud is a high-speed server network with high-performance SSD drives. Unlike other VPN servers, ExpressVPN Cloud is designed to offer more features and better security for China users. It's not just a standard VPN server.

Can I download and use ExpressVPN for streaming content such as Youtube videos? Yes, you can stream Youtube videos using ExpressVPN. First of all, you need to login on Youtube first. Then open the Youtube website directly or through ExpressVPN.

Is ExpressVPN safe? Yes, ExpressVPN is completely safe. ExpressVPN uses advanced security protocols such as AES 256 encryption and Perfect Forward Secrecy to keep your data safe. ExpressVPN uses military-grade protocols and high-performance servers to guarantee you the highest level of security.

I just read that ExpressVPN is a scam VPN! Is it true? No, it's not a scam or a fake. You're not supposed to be worried because ExpressVPN has been around for many years.