Actually, they claim they are not shutting down personal VPNs, only those that are not "registered". Which brings me to this...
Unless I’m mistaken, Opera was purchased by a consortium of Chinese tech companies. And since the Chinese love to say that VPN’s are not illegal in China, and that they are allowed through registered companies… I’m curious as to why the VPN feature does not work in China. Do you mean to tell me that this consortium that was able to pull together billions to buy Opera, is somehow not stable enough to register this VPN service?
That whole thing was a bit sarcastic, as well as a bit serious. Obviously the people running the company realize that westerners wouldn’t be too happy about a VPN registered with the Chinese government, as that would require their access to it. And with that we realize the idiocy of the claims that VPNs are “legal” in China.
But it does suck to sit here in China and have to deal with not only their government's lies, but the propagation of those lies through companies that purchased Opera.