Field noteFour registry words
存续, 在业, 吊销, 注销: the status line, read properly.
The single most consequential line in a Chinese registration record is one or two characters long. Machine translation flattens all four states into vague English — “existing”, “cancelled” — and buyers routinely miss that two of them mean opposite things about whether the counterparty is even allowed to trade.
1. What each word means
- 存续 (in existence / subsisting). The normal state: registered, active, entitled to operate within its scope. Some registries render an operating company as 在业 (in business) — for a buyer the two read the same way.
- 注销 (deregistered). The orderly exit: the company completed liquidation and was struck off. It no longer exists as a legal person. A supplier whose record says 注销 cannot be your counterparty — whoever is talking to you is someone else.
- 吊销 (licence revoked). A penalty state, not an exit. The regulator has revoked the business licence — commonly for abandoned operations or serious violations — but the legal person continues to exist until it is liquidated and deregistered.
- 迁入 / 迁出 (transferred in / out). Administrative relocation between registries — usually noise for a buyer, but worth matching against a changed address story.
2. Why 吊销 is the state that catches people
吊销未注销 — revoked but not yet deregistered — is common, and it is the worst combination for a buyer precisely because everything looks alive. The company still appears in the registry (it legally exists), the English storefront was never taken down, the sales contact still replies. What has changed is invisible from outside China: the entity may no longer lawfully conduct the business you are about to pay it for, and its capacity to perform — or to be pursued — is impaired.
This is also why a licence photo settles nothing: the image shows the licence as it was on the day it was photographed. Revocation happens after. Only the live record carries the current state, which is the reason every check on this site insists on reading the record, dated, rather than collecting documents.
3. Reading status mid-deal
- Before the deposit: status is the first field of the free pass — validate the code, then have the record read. 存续 clears the gate; anything else stops the deal until explained.
- Mid-production: status can change while your order runs. On long lead times, a re-check before the balance payment costs minutes and is the cheapest insurance in the file.
- In a dispute: if the record shows 吊销 or 注销, your claim strategy changes entirely — the question stops being product quality and becomes which entity, if any, still stands behind the order.
This note describes registry status categories as they appear in Chinese public records. It is not legal advice; edge cases (revocation under appeal, liquidation in progress) exist and are exactly where a China-side human read of the record earns its fee. Status is a dated fact — record when you checked.