Although some services like StrongVPN may be convenient, the solution I've relied on over the years is doing my own tunnel through my own server in the U.S. I

Although some services like StrongVPN may be convenient, the solution I've relied on over the years is doing my own tunnel through my own server in the U.S. I usually use a dedicated server in the U.S. But this works with just about anything you have SSH access with. Just run SSH from the command line like "ssh -CND 9999 <your_server_name_in_your_ssh_config>" and setup FoxyProxy (Firefox extension) to use port 9999 (choose any high port you like) for the SOCKS tunnel. There was a blog post making the rounds a month or so ago promoting another VPN/proxy service similar to StrongVPN. All I could think was all those poor non-techies will sign up for this and it will soon get blocked. You are correct that the GFW will not block port 443 for ALL IPs. So your little unknown server serving up SSH connects on 443 (I don't use that port) is the safest bet you've got. This has been a big year for anniversaries in China. It will be interesting to see if things ease up soon.