Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

VisitChinaHub (https://visitchinahub.com) is an independent editorial travel publication written and operated by Lin Mei, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China. For the purposes of the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation, we act as the data controller for personal data collected through this website.

Privacy contact: hello@visitchinahub.com. Postal enquiries can be addressed to VisitChinaHub, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China — please email first, as we do not staff a walk-in office.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Newsletter: your email address, plus the page you signed up from and the date.
• Itinerary request: name, email, optional WhatsApp number, travel month and length, group size, budget band, destinations and interests, and anything you write in the notes field. This is shared with one licensed local operator for the purpose of quoting your trip — we say so on the form and you tick a box before submitting.
• Contact form: name, email, topic and your message.
• Purchases: if you buy a PDF guide, the sale is processed by Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record. We receive the order confirmation and email address, never your card details.

Information collected automatically

• Server and security logs: IP address, user agent, requested URL, timestamp and response status, kept by our host (Cloudflare) for security and abuse prevention.
• Aggregate analytics: page views, referrer, country and device class. We use a cookieless analytics setup precisely so this cannot be tied back to you as an individual.
• Advertising data: only if you accept advertising cookies — see section 4.

We do not knowingly collect special-category data (health, religion, political opinions, biometric data). Please do not include it in a form message.

3. Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small text file stored by your browser. We use as few as we can get away with, and the consent banner on your first visit controls everything that is not strictly necessary.

You can clear or block cookies in your browser at any time. Blocking essential cookies may break the consent banner or the forms. Choosing Essential only in our banner prevents advertising and affiliate cookies from being set on this site.

4. Google AdSense and third-party advertising

This site displays advertising supplied by Google AdSense. Google and its partners are third-party vendors and may use cookies — including the DoubleClick DART cookie — to serve ads based on your visits to this and other websites.

• Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• You may opt out of personalised advertising by visitingGoogle Ads Settings.
• You can also opt out of third-party vendor cookies for personalised advertising ataboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu for EU/UK visitors.
• Visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland are shown a Google-certified consent management prompt before personalised ads are served. Withdrawing consent stops personalised advertising; you may still see contextual ads.

We do not control the content of third-party ads and do not receive personal data from Google’s advertising systems. Ad slots on this site are labelled “Advertisement”, placed outside the article text, and never disguised as editorial.

5. Analytics

We measure readership with a privacy-first, cookieless analytics service. It records aggregated page views, referrer domains, approximate country and device class. It does not fingerprint you, does not track you across sites, and does not create a persistent identifier. Because no personal identifier is stored, this data is not used to build a profile of you.

6. Forms, newsletter and legal bases

Form submissions are transmitted through Formspree or Web3Forms and delivered to our mailbox. Newsletter signups go through the same processor and are stored in our email list.

• Consent — the legal basis for the newsletter and for sharing an itinerary request with an operator. You can withdraw it at any time.
• Contract — the basis for delivering a PDF guide you bought.
• Legitimate interests — replying to a message, keeping the site secure and preventing spam.

Every marketing email we send has a one-click unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from the list within 72 hours. Transactional emails (an order receipt, for instance) are not marketing and are sent regardless of list status.

7. Affiliate links

Some outbound links are affiliate links: Trip.com, Klook, 12Go Asia, Airalo, Holafly and Lemon Squeezy. If you click one and then book, the partner may set a cookie so the booking can be attributed, and may pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. These cookies are set by the partner, not by us, and only on partners’ own domains. Our full affiliate disclosure is on the disclaimer page.

8. Who processes data for us

• Cloudflare — hosting, CDN and security (global).
• Formspree / Web3Forms — form submission delivery (United States).
• Lemon Squeezy — checkout and digital delivery, acting as merchant of record.
• Google — AdSense advertising and fonts (Google Fonts).
• Our email provider — newsletter delivery and correspondence.
• Licensed local tour operators — only the itinerary details needed to quote your trip, and only after you submit the form.

Each processor is bound by a data processing agreement or standard contractual clauses. We do not sell, rent or trade personal data, and we do not share it with data brokers or advertising networks beyond the Google AdSense mechanism described above.

9. How long we keep data

• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe, plus 30 days in backups.
• Itinerary and contact enquiries: 24 months after the last reply, so we can pick up a conversation, then deleted.
• Order records: kept as long as tax law requires (typically 7 years), held by Lemon Squeezy.
• Server logs: 30 days at our host.
• Analytics: aggregated, retained 12 months.

10. Your rights (GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA)

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to processing of your personal data, to data portability, and to withdraw consent. California residents additionally have the right to know what is collected, to request deletion, and to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information — note that we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CPRA, and we do not use sensitive personal information for inferring characteristics.

To exercise any right, email hello@visitchinahub.com with the subject “Privacy request”. We respond within 30 days and will not charge a fee or degrade your access for making a request. We may ask you to confirm control of the email address involved. You also have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority; in the EU, that is your national data protection authority, and in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We honour browser-based opt-out signals, including Global Privacy Control (GPC) where technically supported, and we do not use dark patterns to discourage you from exercising your rights.

11. International transfers

Our host, form processors and email provider operate globally, so your data may be processed outside your country of residence, including in the United States and the European Union. Where data leaves the EEA or UK, transfers rely on adequacy decisions or the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. Because the publication is edited from mainland China, editorial correspondence is also accessed there; it is limited to the message you chose to send.

12. Security

The site is served over HTTPS with HSTS, forms are protected by a honeypot and provider-side spam filtering, and access to the mailbox and email list is limited to one person with two-factor authentication. No system is perfect: if a breach affects your data, we will notify affected subscribers and the relevant authority without undue delay, as required by law.

13. Children

This site is not directed to children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has submitted personal information, email us and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

When the policy changes materially — a new processor, a new advertising partner, a new category of data — we update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes affecting subscribers, send a short notice by email. Previous versions are available on request.

15. Contact

Privacy questions, access requests and complaints:hello@visitchinahub.com. Written correspondence: VisitChinaHub, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. If you are in the EU/UK and unsatisfied with our response, you may escalate to your local supervisory authority.