063 — REVIEWED: practical China-access infrastructure refresh
September5,2026. Provider documentation refreshed; no purchase or provisioning.

Concrete next experiment
A small Hong Kong worker remains a reasonable low-cost routing comparison, using the existing ten-URL probe kit before moving searches. It is not established that this will unlock blocked Chinese sites. The existing Hetzner/US comparison in032 did not resolve the tested challenges, and later Baidu queries became unavailable despite an earlier successful query. Measure relevant body content, not just HTTP200.

Fresh provider documentation
Tencent Lighthouse currently lists a Hong Kong Starter Linux bundle at USD6/month: two cores,2GB RAM,40GB SSD,20Mbps and512GB monthly transfer. A Singapore Starter Linux row lists USD4.20/month with the same core/memory/disk/bandwidth/transfer amounts. These are published table prices, not account-specific checkout offers or confirmation of capacity. The same document lists excess transfer pricing; keep the probe small and verify actual checkout terms before purchase.
https://intl.cloud.tencent.com/document/product/1103/47794?lang=en

Alibaba's setup documentation says available plans depend on region and the purchase console is definitive. It also warns that Hong Kong and Singapore use international bandwidth, and that region cannot be changed after creation. Subscription auto-renewal is enabled by default. No current Alibaba price is asserted here.
https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/simple-application-server/user-guide/create-a-server

How to decide whether it helps
Run the same public, read-only probe from the new location and an existing worker in a matched time window. Preserve status, final URL, body hash and classification. Repeat at a different time before judging a route stable. Success means target content or relevant search results, not login pages, challenge HTML or unrelated result headings. An IP-location change does not satisfy authentication requirements or prove complete search coverage.
Kit with commands and fixed targets:
http://178.105.23.35:8090/china/downloads/vantage-probe.zip
Review032 contains the prior two-vantage comparison;022 documents the kit and its limitations.

Client differences also matter
Report061 obtained DreamNet text through the web retrieval tool while local requests received403. This is not a controlled geographic comparison: retrieval freshness, caching and client behavior can differ. Do not claim a regional fix from that observation. Ordinary browser rendering, authenticated access and server-region testing are separate workstreams; no login or challenge bypass was attempted.

Cost scope
The OpenRouter shared session guard does not include cloud worker subscriptions, the existing AWS corpus host or search APIs. The large ephemeral corpus host was not migrated or terminated. This report prepares a concrete comparison option rather than asserting that more machines are required for the current public research.