Field guide · Northbound Data

A Chinese business licence has nine fields. Two of them settle the deal.

Suppliers send this document constantly, and most foreign buyers file it without reading it — it is in Chinese, it looks official, that seems like enough. But two fields tell you whether you are talking to a factory or a middleman, and one prints a large number that is not money.

Written 2026-08-22 No login or account needed to use any of this

The layout

Every licence is the same national template. Once you know where to look, you can read one without knowing Chinese:

营业执照
统一社会信用代码118-character code
名称2Registered name
类型3Legal form
法定代表人4Legal representative
经营范围5Business scope
注册资本6Registered capital
成立日期7Date established
住所8Domicile
登记机关9Registering authority

Schematic, not a real licence. Field positions vary slightly by province; the field names do not.

Field by field

For each one: what a foreign buyer usually assumes, and what it actually means. The two marked in red are the ones that change decisions.

1 统一社会信用代码 Unified Social Credit Code
Usually assumedA reference number, like a registration ID. Nothing to read into it.
ActuallySelf-verifying, and it encodes the entity type and the registering region. A wrong checksum means the number is fabricated or mistyped.

The first two characters carry the most weight: 91 is a company, 92 is an individually-owned business, 93 is a cooperative. Check a code here — it runs in your browser and nothing is transmitted.

2 名称Registered name
Usually assumedThe brand. Whatever appears on their website and email signature.
ActuallyA four-part legal construction: administrative region + trade name + industry + legal form. It is rarely the brand they sell under.

So 深圳市 / 华强 / 电子科技 / 有限公司 reads as: registered in Shenzhen, trade name Huaqiang, electronics-technology sector, limited company. The region in the name should match the region encoded in the credit code. If the invoice, the contract and the licence carry three different names, ask which entity you are actually contracting with.

3 类型Legal form — decisive
Usually assumedBoilerplate. Some Chinese equivalent of "Ltd".
ActuallyIt states what you can pursue if the deal fails, and the three common forms are not equivalent.
  • 有限责任公司 — limited liability company. A separate legal person with its own assets. This is what most buyers assume they are dealing with.
  • 个体工商户 — individually-owned business. Not a company. No shareholders, no separate corporate assets. You are contracting with a person.
  • 分公司 — a branch. A branch has no independent legal personality and no assets of its own. Obligations sit with the parent company, which is a different entity with a different licence you have not seen.
The branch case is the one that catches people. The name looks like a full company, the licence is genuine, the office is real. But if the type says 分公司, ask for the parent's licence before you pay a deposit — that is the entity with something to lose.
4 法定代表人Legal representative
Usually assumedThe CEO. Roughly the boss.
ActuallyThe one individual with standing to bind the company by default. A specific legal role, not a job title.

The salesperson emailing you is almost never this person. That is normal — but it means a contract signed by them relies on delegated authority. For a first order of any size, the company chop (seal) matters more than a signature, and the name here is what you check it against.

5 经营范围 Business scope — the factory test
Usually assumedMarketing copy. A long list of everything they might do.
ActuallyThe activities they are licensed to carry out. It is the closest thing to an objective answer on factory versus trader.

Look for these words:

  • 生产 (production), 制造 (manufacturing), 加工 (processing) — licensed to make things.
  • 销售 (sales), 批发 (wholesale), 贸易 (trade), 进出口 (import/export) — licensed to buy and resell.
If the scope contains only the second group, they are a trading company — regardless of the factory photographs on their website, which may be a real factory that simply is not theirs. That is not automatically bad: a good trading company manages quality across several factories and earns its margin. But you should know you are paying one, and you should expect to be quoted above the factory price.

Caveat, stated plainly: some genuine manufacturers register a separate trading entity to handle exports, so the entity you are invoiced by may legitimately be trade-only while the group does own a factory. The scope tells you what this entity is licensed to do. It does not prove what the group owns. Ask which entity owns the production line.

6 注册资本Registered capital
Usually assumedMoney the company holds. A proxy for how substantial they are.
ActuallyThe amount the shareholders have committed to contribute, on a schedule set in the company's own articles. It is a promise, not a balance.

Under the subscription system a figure can be registered without that cash ever having been in the company. So a large number here is not evidence of funds, and a modest number is not evidence of weakness. Treat it as a commitment, and do not let it substitute for anything you actually verified. If capitalisation genuinely matters to your decision, ask for audited financials rather than reading the licence.

7 成立日期Date of establishment
Usually assumedHow long they have been in business.
ActuallyCorrect, and one of the more reliable fields on the document.

Use it as a cross-check rather than a score. A licence issued eight months ago alongside a claim of "over 15 years in the industry" is not necessarily false — people do restructure, and a new entity can carry an old team. It is a question worth asking, and the answer usually tells you a lot about how the supplier handles being asked.

8 住所Domicile
Usually assumedThe factory address. Where the goods are made.
ActuallyThe registered address. Very often an office, an industrial-park unit, or a registration agent's address.

Chinese companies routinely register at one address and produce at another, entirely legitimately. The mistake is treating this line as the production site — then booking an inspection against it and finding an office. Ask for the production address separately, in writing.

9 登记机关Registering authority
Usually assumedA rubber stamp. Ignore it.
ActuallyThe local market regulation bureau that issued the licence — and a free consistency check.

The authority named here, the region embedded in the credit code, and the region prefix of the company name should all point to the same place. Three fields, one fact. A forger has to keep all three consistent; a careless one does not.

What none of this proves

  • That the licence is genuine. Everything above reads the document at face value. Only the official registry can confirm the registration exists and is current.
  • That they can make your product well. A correct licence and a manufacturing scope tell you they are permitted to produce. Neither says anything about quality, capacity, or whether they will hit your deadline.
  • That they will not subcontract it. Common, often fine, and invisible on any document.
  • That a clean read means low risk. The checks above catch carelessness and some misrepresentation. A determined fraud will produce a licence that passes all nine.

What it does do is move you from "this looks official" to a short list of specific questions with specific answers. Most supplier problems are not elaborate frauds — they are a buyer who believed a trading company was a factory, or wired a deposit to an entity that turned out to be one person.

If you would rather not do this yourself. I am in China and I read these for a living: licence checks, business scope, price comparison against the domestic market, and a written report in English that marks which findings I could not verify. I do desk verification only — I do not hold your money, take commission from suppliers, or act as your agent of record.