What's in this checklist
How to use this. Items 1–20 are desk checks — public records, documents you can request, and questions any legitimate supplier will answer. Items 21–30 need money, a site visit or a third party. A single item failing is a question, not a verdict. Several failing at once is a reason to stop and look harder.
1. Confirm the legal entity
Start with identity. Everything else depends on knowing exactly which company you are dealing with.
Get a clear copy of the business licence.Look for the full registered Chinese company name — not the English brand name used in emails.
Obtain the 18-digit Unified Social Credit Code and check it.Registration data is public in China. There is no legitimate reason for a supplier to withhold it or obscure it.
Check that the contract, the invoice and the bank account name all match the licence.A mismatch between any of the three is the most reliable single warning sign we see.
Note the establishment date and compare it with the experience claimed.Decades of industry history attached to an entity registered last year needs a clear explanation.
Identify the legal representative, then find out who actually controls the company.The named representative is often not the person making the decisions. Shareholding and change history tell you more.
2. Read the licence properly
A business licence is not proof of capability. It is a set of fields you can read, and each one tells you something.
Check the company type.A limited company, a sole proprietorship and a partnership carry different liability. A "factory" registered as an individual business is worth questioning.
Read the business scope.If it lists only trade, sales or import-export, the company is not manufacturing the product itself — however its website describes it.
Separate registered capital from paid-in capital.A large headline number with a long contribution deadline and no paid-in evidence tells you very little about strength.
Compare the registered address with where production actually happens.A virtual office, or a city far from the claimed factory, needs explaining — not necessarily disqualifying, but explainable.
Confirm the company is still in good standing.Operating status and the operating period matter as much as the licence image. A licence says the company was registered, not that it is healthy today.
3. Factory or trading company
Trading companies are not inherently bad. Paying factory-direct prices for trading-company service, without knowing it, is the problem.
Ask technical questions only a producer can answer.Machine models, tolerances, cycle times, and what they cannot adjust. People who run the line answer immediately; resellers go quiet and "check with the factory".
Request a live, unscripted walk-through of the production floor.Not a highlight reel, not a showroom — the line that actually makes your product, in real time, on short notice.
Match the equipment to the product.The machines on the floor should be the ones capable of making what you are buying. Equipment that cannot produce your item is decoration.
Compare workforce and floor space with the capacity claimed.A small workshop quoting container volumes needs to be justified, not assumed away.
Establish who signs the contract, who issues the invoice, and who receives the money.These should be the same legal entity. When they diverge, find out why before paying anything.
4. Records and warning signs
These are public records. Most buyers never look, which is why they are useful.
Search the enforcement and dishonest-debtor lists.Outstanding enforcement records are a hard stop for most buyers. Do this before requesting samples, not after.
Check the abnormal-operation register."Unable to be contacted at the registered address" is a specific, checkable flag — and one that appears in public records first.
Look for litigation and court records.The pattern and the subject matter tell you more than the raw count. Disputes over quality and delivery with overseas buyers are worth reading closely.
Check whether shareholders or the legal representative changed recently.Especially in the weeks before your engagement. Frequent changes are a pattern worth understanding.
Look for tax irregularities or non-normal taxpayer status.These point to problems that never surface in a sales conversation.
5. Before you pay
Verification is worth nothing if the payment route undoes it. These five items protect the money itself.
Do not pay into a personal account. No exceptions.Payment to an individual removes almost all of your recourse, and there is no legitimate operational reason for it.
Verify the bank details through an independent channel.Call a number you already had — never the number in the email that carries the bank details. Invoice-tampering fraud works exactly this way.
Do not accept 100% prepayment.Negotiate staged terms: typically a deposit against production, and the balance against inspection or shipment.
Get a written contract covering quality, delivery, remedy and dispute resolution.A proforma invoice is a payment request, not a contract. Know which one you are relying on.
Agree who bears intermediary bank charges.Otherwise the amount that arrives will be short of the amount you sent, and the difference becomes an argument.
6. On-site and notarised checks
The last five items are for orders where being wrong is expensive.
Commission a third-party factory audit for large, custom or long-term orders.If you cannot visit China yourself, an independent visit is the only substitute for being there.
Make sure the audit covers capacity, equipment, workforce, workflow and quality control.A "factory visit" that only photographs the entrance and the signboard proves very little.
Verify the product on the line against your specification, with dated evidence.Photos and video with timestamps and location context — not a written assurance that everything matches.
Decide whether you need notarisation and an Apostille.Relevant where the findings have to stand up outside China, where a dispute is foreseeable, or where your own bank or lawyer will ask for it.
Check that the report is traceable.Who issued it, when, on what evidence — and whether that issuer can be independently identified and contacted.
What to do with the results
Group the outcomes into three buckets rather than treating every item equally:
All clear
Identity, licence, records and payment route all line up. Proceed on staged payment terms, and keep the evidence you collected — it is worth having if something goes wrong later.
One or two amber items
Go back and ask. Most amber items have a legitimate explanation, and a supplier with nothing to hide will give you one quickly. An evasive answer is itself the finding.
Any hard stop, or several amber items together
Pause the payment. The combination matters more than any single item: a mismatched beneficiary, an unreachable registered address and a refusal to show the line are not three separate coincidences.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run these checks myself?
Most of items 1–20, yes. Chinese company registration, enforcement and litigation records are public, and a supplier who is legitimate will provide the licence and the credit code without hesitation. What you cannot easily do from outside China is read the Chinese-language records properly, confirm that a factory is really operating at the address given, or obtain evidence that would stand up in a dispute. Those are the parts that usually need someone on the ground.
How long do the first twenty checks take?
An afternoon for a straightforward supplier, if the documentation is provided promptly. The time is not spent searching — it is spent reading, and in particular in waiting for answers to the questions that a supplier would rather not answer.
Do I need all thirty checks for every order?
No. Scale the checklist to what you are risking. A small sample order does not justify a site visit; a custom production run against a large deposit does. Items 1–4 and 21–22 are worth doing at any order size, because they cost nothing and cover the failure modes that are hardest to recover from.
What if the supplier turns out to be a trading company?
That is not automatically a problem. A competent trading company can handle small orders, mixed product lines and quality issues well. The problem is paying factory-direct prices for an intermediary, or discovering the extra link in the chain only when something goes wrong. What matters is that you know which one you are dealing with, and that the entity you are paying is the entity you contracted with.
Do these checks guarantee I won't be defrauded?
No, and any provider that tells you otherwise is overselling. Verification reduces exposure and gives you evidence and recourse where you previously had none. It cannot eliminate commercial risk, and it is not a substitute for a contract, for staged payments, or for your own commercial judgement.
Want this run on a specific supplier?
Send us the company name and we will work through the checklist against the public record and, where relevant, on site — then give you a written report you can act on.
Request a Standard Check