🇨🇳How to verify a supplier in China

Registro

NECIPS / GSXT, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (SAMR)

Identificativo dell'impresa

Unified Social Credit Code (USCC): 18 characters, a commercial company starts with 91

Costo

Consultazione di base gratuita

Stato attivo

The company must be registered and NOT carry an abnormal-operations flag. Registered capital and the social-security headcount in the annual report are the reality check: a supplier claiming a 500-person factory while showing 50,000 RMB of capital and 0-1 insured employees is a middleman with a desk.

• Only the CHINESE name has legal force. An English name on a website or a pro-forma invoice (Shenzhen Great Wall Trading) is a translation, not an identity. Ask for the business licence (the scan carries a QR code that resolves to the state register) and take the characters and the USCC from it.
• Read the BUSINESS SCOPE on that licence. Chinese companies may only trade within their registered scope, so a cable factory suddenly selling you medical masks is a problem: customs can block the export and the contract itself is unsound.
• The company chop (the red seal) is what binds a Chinese contract, not a signature. And the payee must match: a request to pay a personal card, or an offshore Hong Kong entity with a different name, is the classic fraud shape.
• Honest limits, verified 2026-07-14: gsxt.gov.cn refuses most foreign IPs (it answered 521 from ours), searches only by Chinese characters or USCC, and requires a mainland phone number for the detailed records. It is the authoritative register, but it is not a check you can complete from abroad in one click.
• One register that DOES answer from abroad, verified 2026-07-15: the customs Single Window food-exporter registry (ciferquery.singlewindow.cn) confirms free whether a factory is registered with GACC to export food. NMPA (nmpa.gov.cn/datasearch) lists drug, medical-device and cosmetics manufacturing licences free, but sits behind a government WAF that may challenge foreign connections; if it will not load, ask your agent or the supplier for a screenshot with the licence number and re-check the number later.
• Before any deposit, check the courts: zxgk.court.gov.cn lists companies on the dishonest-debtor blacklist (their accounts are frozen and their bosses are barred from flights). Access from outside China is unreliable, so this is one to ask a local partner or agent to run.

Before you sign: five asks no registry can answer

The register proves the company exists and who signs. It says nothing about whether the supplier survives a bad quarter, a fire or a key person leaving. Serious suppliers answer these five asks without friction; hesitation on any of them is information too.

• Business continuity: what happens to your order if their plant loses power, a strike hits or their systems go down? Ask for the plan, not a reassurance.
• Liability insurance: is product or professional liability insured, with which insurer and to what ceiling? A certificate of insurance is a one-page email for a real firm.
• Exit terms: how do you terminate if it goes wrong, what notice and fees apply, and how do you get your tooling, molds or data back?
• Support in numbers: ask for response and resolution times as figures, not adjectives. A supplier who commits to hours in writing has a support process; one who writes fast support does not.
• Named people: who exactly runs production and who owns your account? Continuity of a named team matters more than a polished sales deck, and employee-review sites often show whether that team stays.

General commercial hygiene, not legal advice.