Registering an Apple ID for another region shouldn’t be hard, but Apple keeps changing the flow. Most tutorials online record only a single path, and the comments are full of people saying it no longer works. More annoying: after registering, your first App Store login has a chance of being bumped straight back to the China store.

Here I’ve put together all four methods I could find, plus a complete plan to avoid being sent back to the China store. Not just the US store — the same applies to Turkey, Japan, and Nigeria.