Currawong WebEvidence-first China sourcing

Field noteThe document every supplier sends

What a Chinese business licence proves, field by field.

Every supplier conversation eventually produces the same JPEG: a business licence, stamped, slightly crooked, sent over chat. Most buyers save it and treat the question as closed. It is closer to the beginning of one. Here is what each field is worth — and which three are read for far more than they say.

· 6-minute read · Regulation text checked 9 August 2026

Prepared by Currawong Web’s China-side verification network.

1. The six fields are set by regulation, not by the supplier

China’s Regulations on the Registration and Administration of Market Entities (State Council Order No. 746, in force 1 March 2022) lists the general registered items — the fields that exist for every market entity:

  • 名称 — name
  • 主体类型 — entity type (a limited company, a partnership and an individually-owned business are not the same counterparty)
  • 经营范围 — business scope
  • 住所或者主要经营场所 — domicile or principal place of business
  • 注册资本或者出资额 — registered capital or capital contribution
  • 法定代表人姓名 — name of the legal representative, executive partner or person in charge

Two consequences buyers miss. First, this list is closed: a field you wish were there — turnover, headcount, factory floor area, export history — is not a registered item, so no licence anywhere carries it. Second, a separate article of the same regulation covers filed items (备案事项), which include the articles of association, the operating period, and the subscribed contribution amounts and payment deadlines. Filed is not registered. That distinction is the whole reason the next section exists.

2. Read the code, not the name

The 18-character Unified Social Credit Code identifies the legal person — not the brand, not the storefront, not the English name on the quotation. The market regulator’s Measures for the Administration of Unified Social Credit Codes for Organisations require the registration authority to assign the code at registration as the entity’s sole identity code, printed on the business licence, on a one-licence-one-code basis; an organisation has only one code for its entire life, and a code is never given to a second organisation.

Names carry no such guarantee. In our census of 264 officially recognised “Little Giant” manufacturers, 53.4% had changed their legal name at least once. Chinese company names run five or six words and near-identical variants are common, so a name copied from an old invoice may point at a company that no longer uses it — or at a different company that does now.

Practical rule: take the code off the licence, check the current record against the code, and record how the English trading name relates to it.

3. The largest number on the page is not money

Order No. 746 puts registered capital on a subscription registration system (认缴登记制). The figure is what the shareholders undertook to contribute, denominated in RMB. Declaring 50 million costs nothing at the moment of declaration.

What is not on the licence: the paid-in amount and the payment deadline are filed items, not registered ones. So the document shows you the promise and withholds the performance. Overseas buyers read the number as a solvency signal constantly; it has never been one.

In the same 264 records, 37% showed paid-in capital below the subscribed figure — among the most vetted manufacturers in the country. That is not a distress signal: the Company Law in force since 1 July 2024 gives a five-year window to pay subscriptions in, and companies are working through inflated older figures on a legal timetable. It does mean the number proves nothing about funds in an account.

4. The scope has two halves, and only one of them was checked

Under Order No. 746 a business scope contains general operating items (一般经营项目) and licensed operating items (许可经营项目). The difference matters: licensed items require an approval document before registration, so their presence means an authority examined something. General items are self-declared from a published classification standard — the company chose the wording.

So a scope tells you what a company was drafted to do, at two different evidential strengths. Read the whole scope rather than one line: manufacturing verbs against trading wording is the more decisive read, and the separate import-export line is a drafting signal rather than the legal wall older guides describe — 25.4% of those 264 elite manufacturers carry no import-export wording at all.

5. The field nobody checks is the date

The licence issue date is the entity’s date of establishment — an origin, not a freshness stamp. Registered items must be updated within 30 days of the change, and the authority reissues the licence only when a change touches an item printed on it. Between those two rules sits an obvious gap: the paper in your hand describes the record as it stood when the paper was produced.

How wide is that gap in practice? We read the change logs of the same 264 companies: 54.9% had amended their registration within the previous 12 months. A licence photo saved last year has meaningful odds of describing a company that has since changed something. What a licence photo can and cannot prove takes that further.

6. What the document cannot do

  • It cannot show current status. A company whose licence has been revoked (吊销) still holds a physical document that looks entirely normal, as does one that has been deregistered (注销). The states that mean active are 存续 and 在业, and they live in the record, not on the paper.
  • It cannot prove production. 住所 is where the entity is registered — frequently an office or a unit in a building. Registered address is not factory site.
  • It cannot tell you who signs. The 法定代表人 is the person recorded as able to bind the company; if someone else signs, ask on what authority, in writing.
  • It cannot authenticate itself. The regulation separately penalises forging, altering, leasing, lending and transferring a business licence — with fines up to RMB 500,000 in serious cases. Rules exist for behaviour that happens.

This note describes registration rules as published by Chinese authorities and figures from our own dated census. It is not legal advice, not an audit and not a compliance opinion, and a public record cannot make a transaction safe — it can only tell you who you are dealing with. Records reach us through licensed commercial data platforms that republish filings originating in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System; an absence on a platform is not proof of absence in the official record. The free in-browser check reads a scope you already hold; a scoped China-side check returns the current record with its source and query date.

Primary sources