metier
← ALL GUIDES
Start Here · All importers

Reading a Chinese company registration

VERIFIED SEPTEMBER 2026 · REVIEW MARCH 2027

Every company registered in mainland China has a public record. It states when the company was formed, what it is licensed to do, how much capital was actually paid in, how many people it insures, and every change it has made since. It is free to look at and it is in Chinese.

That record answers a question a factory visit often cannot: are you dealing with the company that makes the goods, a company that sells them, or a shell that does neither.

Where to look

The register itself is 国家企业信用信息公示系统, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, at gsxt.gov.cn. It is free, it is the government's own record, and it is the authority.

Three commercial services aggregate the same data and present it far more readably, with change histories, relationship graphs and exportable reports:

Use an aggregator to read and understand. Use the government site to confirm anything you intend to rely on. Where the two disagree, the government site is right and the aggregator is behind.

All four are in Chinese only. Machine translation handles them well enough, because the fields that matter are short and repetitive.

Start with the number

Ask for the 统一社会信用代码, the unified social credit code. It is eighteen characters and it is the company's permanent identifier. Every other record keys off it.

A supplier who will not give you theirs has answered the question. There is nothing confidential about it. It appears on their business licence, their invoices and their customs filings.

The fields that decide what a company is

Registered capital and paid-in capital

注册资本 is registered capital, a figure the founders chose. It is not evidence of anything on its own. 实缴资本 is paid-in capital, money actually contributed.

A company showing one million RMB registered and no paid-in figure has told you nothing about its resources. A company showing a smaller figure fully paid has told you something real. Look at the second number, not the first.

Insured headcount

参保人数 is the number of people the company pays social insurance for. It is the closest thing in the record to a staff count.

A company that describes itself as a manufacturer and insures nobody does not manufacture. A blank field is not the same as a stated zero, but neither should reassure you. Four insured staff means a small workshop, which may be exactly right for your order, but you should know that before you place it rather than after.

General taxpayer status

一般纳税人 status decides whether the company can issue a special VAT invoice. That single fact shapes how your order can leave China, because the export routes available to a supplier who can issue one are not the same as the routes available to a supplier who cannot.

It is worth knowing before you negotiate price, not after, because it changes who has to be in the transaction.

Business scope

经营范围 lists what the company is licensed to do. Read it for two things.

First, the verbs. 生产 and 制造 mean production and manufacturing. 销售 and 批发 mean sales and wholesale. A scope that contains only the second pair describes a trader, whatever the website says.

Second, look for 货物进出口, import and export of goods. A company without it in scope cannot export in its own name. That does not make them a bad supplier. It does mean somebody else will have to be the exporter, and you need to know who that is and on what terms.

Customs registration

A full report carries a section on import and export credit, 进出口信用. Where the company is registered with customs it shows a customs registration code, the date, the category, and the customs district.

The category to look for is 进出口货物收发货人, consignor or consignee of import and export goods. That registration is what lets a company clear goods in its own name.

This is a different question from whether 货物进出口 appears in the business scope. Scope is permission. Customs registration is having actually done it. A company can hold the scope and never have registered, and then it cannot be your exporter whatever the licence says.

If that section is empty, somebody else will be exporting your goods. Ask who, and on what basis, before you agree a price, because the answer changes the paperwork, the invoice trail and sometimes the price itself.

Industry classification

所属行业 is the industry the company is classified under. It is assigned, not chosen freely, and it sometimes disagrees with the business scope.

A company whose scope includes manufacturing but which is classified under 批发业, wholesale, is telling you which of the two it actually does.

Registered address

A registered address that reads as a building, a block and a floor unit is an office or a small workshop unit. A factory has a plant address. Neither is disqualifying. The point is to know which you are looking at before someone shows you photographs of a production line.

Two records, side by side

The fields mean little in isolation. Read together they describe a business. Here are two invented records, each internally consistent with companies you will actually meet.

Record A

This reads as a real, small, stable manufacturer. The capital was actually contributed, it insures three dozen people, it is classified as making things, it has a plant rather than an office unit, and it can export in its own name. Small is not a problem. Unknowably small is.

Record B

This reads as a trading company, recently assembled. The larger registered capital is the least informative number on the page, because none of it has been contributed.

Neither record is disqualifying. Record B may be exactly the right partner, with a good relationship to a factory it will not name and no interest in owning one. But you now know that it is not a factory, that it cannot issue the invoice a general taxpayer issues, and that it cannot be the exporter. Each of those changes who else has to be in the transaction, and every one of them costs something.

The part almost nobody reads

The record includes 变更记录, a dated log of every change the company has made. It is the most useful part and it takes ten minutes.

Things worth noticing in a change log:

None of these is proof of anything by itself. Together they describe a trajectory, and the trajectory is usually more informative than the current snapshot.

The cluster pattern

Here is a composite of something common enough to be worth naming.

Three companies are registered at units one, two and three on the same floor of the same building. Their business scopes are near-identical and read as though they came from a template. One of the three has import and export in scope, general taxpayer status, and a handful of insured staff. The other two have small registered capital, no import and export, no general taxpayer status, and a stated insured headcount of zero. One was registered a few days before the first company restructured. The third was registered years later. Two of the legal representatives share a surname.

That is not three suppliers to compare. It is one operation with its paperwork spread across three entities, and the entity you contract with determines whose balance sheet stands behind your deposit and whose name goes on the export documents.

The question to ask is not whether this is legitimate. Often it is entirely ordinary tax and liability structuring. The question is which entity you are paying, which entity is selling, and whether those are the same one.

The risk screen

A full report carries a block usually headed 重点关注, key concerns. It is a list of roughly twenty-seven public registers, each either empty or not. Reading it takes a minute and it is the cheapest diligence available anywhere.

The entries that should stop a payment:

The entries that should change your terms rather than end the conversation:

An empty block is not proof of a good supplier. It is proof that nothing has gone publicly wrong yet, which for a company founded last year means very little.

What the registration does not tell you

It proves the entity exists and what it is licensed to do. It does not prove capacity, quality, equipment, or that the factory you were shown belongs to them. Plenty of real manufacturers look unimpressive on paper and plenty of traders look substantial.

Registration is the cheap filter you run before you spend money on an audit. It is not a substitute for the audit.

Questions to ask

  1. What is your unified social credit code?
  2. Is the company I am paying the same company that manufactures, and if not, what is the relationship between them?
  3. Can you issue a special VAT invoice?
  4. Is import and export in your business scope, and if not, who will be the exporter?
  5. Are you registered with customs as a consignor and consignee, and what is your customs registration code?
  6. Is the address on your business licence the address of the plant?

The short version

Paid-in capital, insured headcount, general taxpayer status, customs registration and the risk block will tell you in ten minutes what a week of emails will not. Read the change history. Check whether the company taking your money is the company making the goods, and whether it can export them.

Verified September 2026. Next review March 2027. Registration data is maintained by Chinese regulators and the fields shown differ between sources. Treat it as a filter, not as a guarantee, and confirm anything you intend to rely on.