How to Check a Chinese Company's Business License (GSXT Lookup)

A business license (营业执照) is the document every mainland Chinese company receives when it registers, and a copy of it is the first thing most suppliers send when you ask for proof that they are real. The copy itself proves little: images are easy to edit and a genuine license can belong to a different company than the one you are talking to. What matters is checking the license against the official registry and against the documents you will actually pay on. This guide covers how to do that in about fifteen minutes, without reading Chinese.

What a Chinese business license shows#

Since 2015 China has used a single license format for companies, with the 18-character unified social credit code replacing the older registration, tax and organization numbers. The fields you need are printed on every license and appear in the same order in the online registry.

The unified social credit code has a fixed structure under national standard GB 32100-2015: one character for the registration authority, one for the entity category, six for the administrative division, nine for the organization and a final check character. Codes use digits and capital letters but never I, O, Z, S or V. A code that breaks those rules is not a valid code, but a valid-looking code is not proof either; only the registry search is.

Step 1: Get the license and the Chinese legal name#

Ask the supplier for a color copy of the current business license and confirm the Chinese legal name in writing, for example in the order chat. Do not accept an English name as a substitute. English trading names are not registered in mainland China, and one Chinese company can use several of them.

If the supplier is on Alibaba.com or 1688.com, the Chinese company name is also shown on the store's company profile. Copy it from there and compare it with the license character by character; a single different character means a different company.

Step 2: Search the official registry#

The registry is the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统), run by the State Administration for Market Regulation at gsxt.gov.cn. It is free, needs no account and covers every registered company in mainland China.

1. Open gsxt.gov.cn and paste the Chinese company name or the 18-character code into the search box on the home page. The box accepts either.
2. Complete the image or slider CAPTCHA. The site is often slow or times out for visitors outside mainland China; retry at a different time of day or use a provincial registry (each province runs a mirror under the same system, for example the Zhejiang or Guangdong site) which returns the same record.
3. Pick the matching result. A name search can return similar-looking companies, so compare the code, not just the name.
4. Open the company page. The first tab shows the registration record; further tabs show changes, annual reports, administrative penalties, and any abnormal-operation or serious-violation listings.

Translate the page with your browser if you do not read Chinese. The field order matches the license table above.

Step 3: Read the record#

Four things on the record decide whether the company passes.

Status (登记状态). The company must be active. The common labels are:

Business scope (经营范围). For a company that calls itself a factory, the scope should include production or manufacturing of a relevant product group. A scope limited to sales (销售), technical services or import and export (进出口) describes a trading company. Neither is wrong, but the supplier should not have told you otherwise. Details on what that difference means for your order are in factory vs trading company.

Establishment date and capital. Compare the establishment date with the history the salesperson gave you. A company registered last year with "15 years of export experience" may be a new shell of an old business, which is common and not necessarily bad, or it may be a fresh registration used for fraud. Ask which, and ask for the old company's name.

Lists and penalties. The record shows whether the company is on the abnormal operations list (经营异常名录), usually for failing to file an annual report or for being unreachable at its registered address, and whether it has administrative penalties or is on the serious violations list. An abnormal listing is a reason to ask questions; a serious-violation listing is a reason to stop.

Step 4: Match the license to the money#

Most supplier fraud is not a fake company but a real company whose name does not match the account you are asked to pay. Before any payment, check that four names are identical:

1. The legal name on the business license
2. The seller name on the platform profile or the contract
3. The company name on the proforma invoice
4. The beneficiary name of the bank account

If the beneficiary is a person, a different company, or a company in Hong Kong or elsewhere that is not named in your contract, do not pay until the supplier explains and confirms the account through a channel you already trust, such as a video call with the contact you have been dealing with. Fraudsters who have compromised a supplier's email typically send new bank details a few days before the balance is due; the license check is what lets you notice. Payment routes and their protections are compared in how to pay Chinese suppliers.

How to spot a fake or borrowed license#

A forged license is rare compared with a borrowed one: a trader showing a nearby factory's license, or a salesperson using a former employer's documents. Signs to look for:

• The registry record does not match the image. Any difference in name, code, legal representative or address means the image is not this company's current license.
• The code fails the format rules described above, or the registration authority on the license is in a different city from the registered address.
• Edited image artifacts around the company name, code or date, or a license photo that is a screenshot of another photo.
• The person you deal with is not connected to the company. Ask for a business card with the company's Chinese name and a company email address; free email accounts and a mobile number only are weak signs of a real employee.
• Certificates and audit reports name a different company than the license, for example an ISO 9001 certificate issued to the factory next door.

When in doubt, a live video call where the supplier shows the original license on the office wall next to the company nameplate settles most cases. For larger orders, a paid factory audit by an inspection company includes a document check.

Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas entities#

Companies in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are not in the mainland registry.

• Hong Kong: the Companies Registry offers an online search (e-Search at cr.gov.hk) that shows the company's name, number, incorporation date and status. Company documents can be bought for a small fee.
• Taiwan: the Ministry of Economic Affairs runs a public company and business registration search at findbiz.nat.gov.tw, in Chinese with an English interface for basic data.
• Other countries: many Chinese exporters invoice through companies in Singapore, the United States or the United Kingdom. Use that country's registry and apply the same four-way name match.

A mainland factory that invoices through a Hong Kong company should be able to show both registrations and explain the link, for example shared ownership shown in the Hong Kong company's annual return.

Commercial lookup services#

Qichacha (企查查), Tianyancha (天眼查) and Aiqicha (爱企查) repackage registry data with a better interface, English-language reports, ownership charts, court records and change histories, and they work reliably from outside China. They are useful for a quick first look and for finding the Chinese name behind an English one. For the decision to pay, go back to the government record: commercial databases can lag behind status changes, and the registry is what a court or your bank will refer to.

What a license check cannot tell you#

A clean license confirms that a company exists, is active and is allowed to do what it says. It says nothing about production capacity, quality systems, whether the factory you saw in photos belongs to this company, or whether the company will honor its contract. Treat the license check as the first gate, then continue with the checks in how to verify an Alibaba supplier before you pay: badges and assessment reports, a live video walk-through, samples, and an inspection before shipment.