I think self-hosting is the better solution if you're worried about someone blocking a VPN's IP address.

I've heard those conspiracy theories, but to be honest I just accepted that everything was monitored when I was in China anyway. Installing something like Wechat/微信 basically gives tencent permission to everything that's on your (Android) phone anyway. To me, the VPN was solely about granting access to what was otherwise blocked, not about privacy.