Slowness, is part of the methodology to make it suck to be Chinese on par with random disconnects for just the amount of time it takes the average VPN client to time out. 

Always remember, YOU are not special, the GFW does not exist to piss you off, it is there to protect the Chinese from being exposed to the more deprived and damaging elements of foreing cultures, such as food safety information, Nickleback music, the truth etc. 

Insecurity, fear, and total lack of imagination (ie. what Scan said)

And it's not like China does not have any materials to build an identity on its own to be proud of. Just let people do their own stuff, just let Chinese people blossom, it's long overdue (and might require a different education system). But nooooo, control freak wanna control everything for the sake of it instead of facing its own demons.

I suspected this all along when the "fastest" Internet speed I paid for still resembles the wifi with everyone on at the same time. What's the point when all the sites I want to go on are purposely slowed down?

Lately, at work, they are saying that when I use websites it slows down the network, since I use foreign sites...is this true or even possible?

I actually wonder why they bother proposing faster speeds. Even the marketing campaigns have a hard time introducing why the fuck all this extra bandwidth is supposed to be for.

All local services already feel like intranet, including the most demanding ones like video, and everything that's slow will never be faster, because it's slow by design.