Privacy Policy of State Council App

Last updated: June 11, 2021

INTRODUCTION

The State Council App is a new media platform on which the State Council of the People's Republic of China releases its administrative updates and offers e-government services. The application is hosted by the General Office of the State Council, and is run and maintained by the Operations Center of the Chinese government website.

Privacy Policy of the State Council App describes:

I. How we collect and use your personal information

II. How we share your personal information

III. How we protect your personal information

IV. How we deal with personal information about children

V. How the Privacy Policy is updated

VI. Other

VII. How to contact us

We attach great importance to protecting users' privacy and personal information. We will take the necessary security measures to protect your personal information as required by laws and regulations.

Please read the Privacy Policy carefully to understand how we handle your personal information before using the products and services of the State Council App. By using them, you confirm that you agree to our policies. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

I. How we collect and use your personal information

Personal information refers to various types of information recorded in electronic or other forms that serves, separately or together with other information, to determine the identity of specific natural persons or indicate activities thereof.

The State Council App will collect personal information either voluntarily offered by you as you use it or generated from such use in the following ways, in a bid to provide services for you and optimize our services.

1. You may need to provide information such as your name, nationality and email address if you decide to leave a message on the app, so we can respond to your request. We will stringently protect your information during this process.

2. We will gather basic information necessary for rendering services successfully, improving user experience and ensuring user account security. This includes device model, operating system version, and unique device identifier, the IP address, State Council App version, access network mode, type and status, the quality of your network, and user operation and service logs (e.g. service errors, information shared to third-party social media platforms, favorites and usage information).

3. We may record relevant information, such as app usage frequency, app errors, app usage overview, performance data and source of the application, for the purpose of getting a better picture of how the app works and delivering safe and more user-friendly services. We will not combine the information with any personal information you provide.

4. Permission requests:

When providing services, the State Council App needs to access certain features on your device, but you may disable partial or all permissions in your device's Settings, which will deny the app access to corresponding personal information.

5. You understand and agree that we can harness technologies to de-identify and/or anonymize your personal information, preventing your identity from being revealed. In this case, we can analyze and utilize the de-identified information to the extent permitted by related laws, regulations and supervisory policies.

6. According to related laws and regulations, we may collect and use your personal information as below without your authorization and consent:

(1) Information directly associated with national security, national defense, or other national interests;

(2) Information directly associated with public security, public health, the public's right to know, or other significant public interests;

(3) Information directly related to criminal investigations, prosecutions, trials, execution of judgments, and the like;

(4) Information that we must collect and use for the protection of life, assets, reputation, or any other significant legal rights and interests of you or other individuals and of which personal consent to collection and use is extremely hard to obtain;

(5) Personal information you made public;

(6) Personal information from legally publicized sources, including legal news reports and government information disclosure;

(7) Information necessary for maintaining safe and stable operation of the products or services we provide for you, for example, when detecting and handling product or service failures;

(8) Any other circumstances stipulated by laws and regulations. 

Please know that we are constantly updating and developing the functions and services provided to you. We will inform you of the content, scope, and purposes of our information collection in the form of page prompts, interactive flows, website notices, among others, if your personal information has been collected by any function or service not mentioned above, and ask for your consent.

II. How we share your personal information

1. In order to increase the efficiency, lower costs and improve accuracy of information processing, we may entrust technical support companies, cooperative companies or other professional institutions to deal with the user information. But we will require them to abide by strict confidentiality obligations and take effective measures to prohibit the use of such information for purposes not authorized by you. When the relationship is terminated, they will no longer keep any personal information.

2According to related laws and regulations and national standards, we may share or publicly disclose your personal information as below without your prior consent:

(1) Information directly associated with national security and national defense;

(2) Information directly associated with public security, public health, or other significant public interests;

(3) Information directly related to criminal investigations, prosecutions, trials, execution of judgments, and the like;

(4) Information that we must share or publicly disclose for the protection of life, assets, or any other significant legal rights and interests of you or other individuals and of which personal consent to sharing or public disclosure is extremely hard to obtain;

(5) Any other circumstances stipulated by laws and regulations.

III. How we protect your personal information

1. We have put industry-recognized safety precautions in place to secure the personal information you provided against unauthorized access, public disclosure, use, revision, damage or loss. To this end, all reasonable and feasible measures will be taken. For instance, we will employ encryption technology to keep your personal data confidential; we will use reliable protection mechanisms to avoid malicious attacks on such data; we will deploy an access control mechanism limiting access only to people authorized to access your personal information.

2. The State Council App has been certified at Level 3 by the standard of multi-level protection of information security implemented by the Ministry of Public Security, and we have built sound coordination and communication mechanisms with regulatory authorities. This enables us to quickly stop and handle various sorts of information security threats and fully safeguard your information.

3. We will take all reasonable and feasible actions to ensure non-related personal information is not collected. We will retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, except when an extension is needed or otherwise permitted by law.

4. Given technical limitations and possible malicious actions, personal information security incidents may occur in circumstances beyond our control. If that happens, we will inform you in a timely manner or release circulars as appropriate when one-by-one notification is hindered, in accordance with related laws, regulations and supervisory policies. In addition, we will actively report the handling of personal information security incidents to regulatory authorities as required.

IV. How we deal with personal information about children

Our products and services are primarily intended for adults.

We will use or publicly disclose personal information about children collected upon consent from their parent(s) only when such use or public disclosure is permitted by law, explicitly agreed to by their parent(s) or guardian(s), or necessary to protect the children involved.

We define children as any persons below the age of 14, although different definitions are adopted in laws and conventions of different regions.

If we find we have collected personal information about any child without obtaining prior verifiable parental consent, we will make an effort to delete the data in question as soon as possible.

V. How the Privacy Policy gets updated

We may amend the Privacy Policy in due time, and when doing so we will inform you by posting the modified version on the app.

VI. Other

The State Council App owns the copyrights on the Privacy Policy and retains the ultimate right of interpretation and amendment.

The Privacy Policy applies to the English version of the State Council App only.

VII. How to contact us

Please send us an email to app@mail.gov.cn if you have any questions, opinions or suggestions on the Privacy Policy or matters relating to your personal information.

You will need to upload your identity document, valid contact information, and related evidence so that we can efficiently address your requests and give you timely feedback. We will process your requests within 30 days after your identity is verified.