Google Play is no problem but you need to root your phone and use the app marketaccess if you want access to (updates to) paid apps. Also, for Apps like Twitter, you will need your VPN to download them.

Apple store is no problem since the government and Apple are pretty much fornicating.

In China Tightening Controls on Internet Willy Lam tells the AP that:

Chinese leaders "realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile," said Lam. "There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet."
world.time.com/[...]

China threatens to censor apps.

Apple adopted https in App Store. China threatens to censor apps.

Recently, China threatens to require every app to have a license in order to go on sale, as reported by New York times. The time is too coincidental as Apple adopted https on iTunes for searching and downloading Apps.

Before this adoption, searching for certain keywords such as "vpn" would lead to a connection reset on iTunes and visiting the page for certain Apps, such as VPN Express would also cause a reset, which means there is no way for users in China to search for or download certain Apps even if they are available in China App Store.

But because now https is implemented by Apple on almost all connection to iTunes server, Great Firewall of China has no way to selectively block connection to certain contents. A test to the same link mentioned above with https protocol yields no censorship.

This change provides a commercial platform in China(China App Store uses CNY for payment) not subject to the arbitrary censorship of the government. For example, opendoor an app dedicated to circumventing the Internet is on sale on China App Store and users are willing to pay to remove ads in the app.

Any other trading platform, such as Taobao(Chinese version of ebay) is actively censoring Internet Circumvention tools and selling anti-censorship tools there is not possible.

Therefore, it is highly likely that the government have noticed this loophole in its censorship net, and is now trying to close it.

Ainbro - I just bought a new Android phone, rooted and flashed the ROM (horrible Chinese ROM installed), so was downloading a lot of stuff from the google play store to set it up. All worked no problems and was quite fast.

My advice regarding the play store, if you are an Android user - the Chinese govt and google hate each other, so the play store and google services is not installed on any new phone purchased in China. You can (generally) access the store no problems (they don't want to alienate tourists I guess), but this could change tomorrow. New phones instead use some other stores which are frankly a bit pants, all in Chinese and come pre-installed with bloatware all over the place. Best bet is to bring the phone you will be using over the next couple of years with you. Or if you are able to flash ROMs and root phones, you can buy one here and download all the stuff for doing so over VPN.

In general, I can't see how China can clamp down on internet if they want to continue opening up. Its virtually impossible to control once you open the pandora's box. I suspect they are spending an increasingly ridiculous amount of $$ exerting the little control they currently have over the internet, but are coming to realise they are on a hiding to nothing. I feel their internet control is more to do with protectionism (where would youku be if youtube was accessible... or baidu for google etc etc) rather than content control. They just need to stick to blocking sites they don't like rather than messing with VPN connection, which affect international businesses greatly, I feel.

Interesting that the new leaders first steps, after talking about getting rid of corruption and making the government more accessible in his initial speech, is to clamp down on the internet, which can help both goals. A bit backwards don't you think?

An alternative to play store is the Amazon.com appstore. Seems you can get the same apps at either site. You can access amazon with out a VPN. I am not sure about buying paid apps without a vpn. Worth a try.