How to Read a Chinese Supplier Business License and Check It on GSXT

Before a single dollar leaves your account, you can confirm that the company you are talking to is a real, registered Chinese business, that it is allowed to do what it claims, and that the bank account you are about to pay belongs to that same legal entity. The document that lets you do this is the business license, and the free tool that lets you check it is the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. This guide walks through every field on the license, what each one tells you, and the exact cross-checks that catch a fake or a middleman pretending to be a factory. It pairs with our wider guide on how to verify a Chinese supplier before you pay and the piece on telling a manufacturer from a supplier.

What the business license actually is

Every company legally registered in mainland China holds a business license issued by the local Administration for Market Regulation. It is the Chinese equivalent of a trade licence plus an incorporation certificate rolled into one sheet. Chinese companies are required to display it at their registered address, and it is completely normal to ask a supplier to send you a colour scan or a clear photo of it early in the conversation. A supplier who stalls, sends a blurred corner, or sends a license in a language other than Chinese should raise your guard immediately, because the genuine document is a standardised A4 portrait sheet with a red header, a QR code in the upper area and a red company seal across the lower portion.

The license does not prove the company is honest or capable. It proves the company exists as a legal person, tells you who controls it, when it was formed, how much capital stands behind it, and what activities it registered to perform. Those facts are enough to filter out a large share of problem suppliers on their own.

Reading the license field by field

The genuine license has a fixed set of fields. Learn what each one means and you can read any supplier license in under a minute:

• Unified Social Credit Code — an 18-character string that is the company national ID number. It appears on the license, on the company bank records and on every tax invoice they issue. This is the number you type into the government register to verify everything else.
• Company name — the full registered Chinese name. The English name a supplier uses on Alibaba or in emails has no legal standing in China; only the Chinese name is registered. The bank account you pay should be in this exact Chinese name.
• Type — for example a limited liability company or a sole proprietorship. A limited company with several shareholders is generally a more substantial counterparty than a one-person operation.
• Registered address — the legal address, which may differ from the factory address. If the license address is an office tower in a city centre and they claim a 200-worker factory, ask for the separate factory address and a utility bill or lease for it.
• Legal representative — the individual with authority to bind the company. Their name should match the person signing your contract, or the contract should show a written authorisation.
• Registered capital — the capital the shareholders committed. Since 2014 China uses a subscribed-capital system, so this figure is a commitment, not cash in the bank, but a company claiming large export orders with a registered capital of a few tens of thousands of RMB is worth a second look.
• Date of establishment — how long the company has existed. A firm formed three weeks before it approached you is not automatically a scam, but it is not the decade-old factory it may have implied.
• Business term — the validity window of the registration, often shown as a start date with either an end date or the phrase for a long term.
• Business scope — the list of activities the company is registered to carry out. This is the field most importers skip and the one that tells you the most.

Why the business scope line is the one that matters

The business scope is a written list, in Chinese, of what the company is permitted to do. A real manufacturer of, say, kitchen appliances will have wording that includes production or manufacturing of the relevant goods. A trading company will have wording around sales, import and export, or wholesale, but no manufacturing verb. Neither is bad in itself, and a good trading company can be the right partner, but you should know which one you are dealing with, and the scope line settles it in seconds. If a company presents itself as the factory but its scope is pure trading, the price you are quoted almost certainly has a layer on it, and your quality complaints will have to travel through an intermediary who did not make the goods.

The scope also flags regulated categories. Products such as medical devices, food contact items and certain chemicals require the scope to carry a specific licensed activity, sometimes with a separate permit number. If you are buying one of those and the scope is silent on it, the supplier may be shipping under someone else export rights, which becomes your problem if the paperwork is questioned.

Verifying the license on the government register

China runs a free public register called the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, known by its initials GSXT, at gsxt.gov.cn. It is in Chinese, but a browser translation makes it usable. The process is short:

• Open the site and paste either the full registered Chinese company name or the 18-character unified social credit code into the search box.
• Complete the slider or click puzzle the site uses to block bots. This sometimes needs a second attempt.
• Open the matching company record and compare every field against the license the supplier sent you: name, credit code, legal representative, capital, establishment date, registered address and status.
• Check that the registration status reads as existing or in business, not revoked, cancelled or abnormal. A company placed on the abnormal operations list has failed to file required reports and is a serious warning sign.
• Scroll to the annual reports and any administrative penalties. A pattern of penalties, frequent shareholder changes just before your contact, or a very recent change of legal representative all deserve questions.

If the supplier is only reachable through a marketplace and cannot or will not give you a credit code that resolves on GSXT, treat that as a decision point, not a detail. Marketplace verification badges are not a substitute; they confirm a company paid for a service, not that it is the maker of your goods. Our note on what Gold Supplier status does and does not mean covers that trap.

Cross-checks that catch the common tricks

Once the license verifies on GSXT, run three more checks that expose the frauds a clean license alone will not:

• Bank account name. The account on the pro forma invoice must be the exact registered Chinese company name. Payment to a personal name, a Hong Kong company with a different name, or a third company is the single most common way importers lose a deposit. If the supplier insists on an offshore account, slow down and get it in writing why.
• Contact identity. The email domain, the person you chat with and the legal representative or an authorised staff member should line up. A free email address and a salesperson who cannot name the company legal representative is a thin setup.
• Address reality. Put the registered address and any separate factory address into a mapping tool with satellite view. An industrial building is a good sign; a residential block or an empty lot where a factory should be is not.

None of this guarantees a smooth order, and it is not a replacement for a factory audit or a pre-production sample. What it does is cheap, fast and decisive: fifteen minutes with the license and GSXT removes the suppliers who cannot survive basic scrutiny, so your real due-diligence time goes to the ones worth it.

What we do with this on your behalf

When DE International sources for a client, license reading and GSXT verification are step one on every new supplier, before samples and before any payment. We keep the credit code on file, match it to the bank account on the pro forma invoice, and flag any mismatch between the trading name, the legal entity and the factory that will actually build your goods. If you have a supplier in hand and just want a second set of eyes on the license before you pay, send us the scan and the account details.

DE International sources, inspects and ships from China to Bangladesh, and handles the customs side at Chattogram and Dhaka. If you want a hand applying any of this to a live order, tell us the product, the quantity and where it needs to land, and we will build a plan and a quote around it. Start at our services page, see how our China sourcing and buying agent service works, browse the shop, or contact us directly.