Whitepaper
ChinaCopilot
An installable guide for foreign visitors across mainland China and Hong Kong — stage checklists, official deep links, and payment help you can reconfirm.
for partners and operators — not required reading for travelers. About & disclaimer
Why it exists
The hard part of visiting China is rarely “finding a blog post.” It is knowing what to do next, reaching the right official app or page, paying when wallets fail, and telling a driver a Chinese place name.
ChinaCopilot is built so visitors can finish those steps themselves: checklists by life stage, official handoffs, and payment or place tools with clear verification limits — not filings done for you, and not guaranteed outcomes.
Problems we address
| Problem | Situation | What ChinaCopilot does |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong stage noise | Already on the ground but stuck in visa-prep content | Home stage picker; Stay opens the Stay checklist |
| Scattered official entry points | Payments, transit QR, lodging registration hard to find | Checklist items link to official or mainstream apps |
| Payment failure | Tour Pass / foreign cards / cash backup unclear | Payment guide + Places payment tags |
| Chinese place names | Driver does not understand “The Bund” | English → Chinese lookup (cache, then official Amap search) |
| Untrusted payment claims | Sites invent “accepts foreign cards” | Human-gated tags; UNVERIFIED candidates; stale-date warnings |
| HK mixed with mainland | HK licensed OTC / maps confused with mainland RMB rails | Separate Hong Kong hub + finance subpage; boundaries written clearly |
Who it is for
- Foreign visitors planning, arriving, staying, extending, leaving, or lawfully settling in mainland China
- The same audience using Hong Kong as first stop or side trip (hub + licensed finance — separate from mainland paths)
- Merchants who receive an outreach link and self-report payment options (published only after human review)
- The site operator (private admin console — never in tourist nav)
Geography
- Mainland China: journey checklists, payments, Places, major entry-airport directory, and watch-outs — city-level depth is strongest in Shanghai and keeps expanding
- Hong Kong: dedicated hub (stay clock, HKG flights, borders, apps, Google Maps) plus licensed OTC / fiat finance subpage — not a mainland RMB off-ramp or sanctions-evasion guide
What you can do
- Home stage picker: Just curious / doing research (browse, no checklist) + Plan → Prep → Arrive → Stay → Extend → Leave → Settle (checklists)
- Topic browse: Arrive / Extend / Leave / Settle open as pure link directories (/guide); checklists stay under /journey
- Journey checklists with official and app deep links; progress saved on this device
- Entry airports: Hong Kong (HKG) + major mainland international hubs with official operator links
- Payment guide: Tour Pass, Alipay, cards, cash
- Apps setup: open official entries yourself — we do not register accounts for you
- Places: filter by payment patterns; English → Chinese place names for taxis
- Essentials: transit, hospitals, SOS, insurance, translation, and related links
- Watch-outs: tourist traps and hidden costs (taxis, “free” tours, temples, street FX, and more)
- Hong Kong hub: stay clock, flights via HKG, borders, apps, Google Maps — plus licensed OTC / fiat merchants (verify yourself on SFC; we do not broker)
- Share: system share or copy link (no paid referral program)
Trust rules for venue data
- Published payment tags need human confirm or cleared merchant reports
- Amap imports and merchant self-reports stay UNVERIFIED until confirmed
- Collection uses official Amap Web Service only — no Dianping / Meituan / Xiaohongshu scraping
- No personal WeChat / WhatsApp protocol mass-send tooling
What we do not do
- Automated visa, bank, or police filings — or guaranteed outcomes
- Illegal stay or illegal work coaching
- Gray crawling or ban-evasion tooling
- Cash referral payouts (share links are free; no invite bounties today)
- Unlicensed crypto OTC / street cash desks, or any sanctions-evasion playbook (HK licensed rails are listed separately for self-check — we do not broker)
Languages
English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish. First visit follows saved language, then phone/browser language, then country hint, then English if unsupported.
ChinaCopilot is a mainland China + Hong Kong navigation site for foreign visitors: stage checklists, official handoffs, airports, watch-outs, and payment or place tools — honest, maintainable, and not gray-market infrastructure.