How to Read a Chinese Factory's Business License (and Spot Red Flags)

Registered capital: a company registered with very low capital relative to the order size you're placing is a caution flag, though not disqualifying on its own.

Business scope: check whether the license lists manufacturing/production for the category you're buying, or only "trading" and "import-export" - the latter means you're dealing with a trading company, not the factory itself.

Registration date: a company registered a few months ago claiming 15 years of manufacturing experience is worth questioning.

Status: make sure the license shows as active, not revoked or under investigation.

Where to check: China's National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统) lets you pull a company's official registration record for free, using its 18-digit Unified Social Credit Code.

None of this replaces an actual factory visit or third-party audit - a clean business license only confirms the company is legally registered, not that it has the production capacity it claims.

It's a five-minute check, but it filters out the most obvious shell companies and trading-company impersonators before you invest more time in sampling or negotiation.

We run this check, plus an in-person or partner-verified factory audit, on every new supplier before introducing them to a client - so by the time you see a factory profile from us, this step is already done.