FIELD NOTE / 01
One free line, read honestly.
Most “is it a factory?” anxiety starts before any money is spent on verification. The registered business scope costs nothing to read — as long as you treat it as a signal, not a conclusion.
What the business scope is
The 经营范围 is a registration matter: text the company filed with the market-regulation authority describing its registered activities. It appears on the business licence and in the company’s public record on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System.
China’s market-entity registration regulation lists the business scope among the general registration matters, alongside the name, entity type, address and legal representative. Changes to it must be registered — which is why a dated live record beats an undated screenshot.
What it can tell you
The first segment of the scope usually states the main business. Wording built around production verbs — 生产、加工、制造 — points to a registered manufacturing role; wording built around 批发、零售、销售 or 进出口 points to a registered trading role.
That makes the scope a sensible first-pass role signal: free, public, and readable before you commit to any deeper check. It is exactly the signal our in-browser screening tool weighs.
Paste a name and scope into the free factory-or-trader reading →
What it cannot tell you
Companies routinely register broad scopes “just in case”. Manufacturing wording does not prove the company controls a production site, owns equipment, employs the process workers, or will make your order itself rather than outsourcing it. Trading wording does not make a company a bad supplier — many excellent suppliers are traders with tight factory control.
The scope also says nothing about product quality, compliance, delivery reliability or payment safety. Those need separate, order-specific evidence.
Neither a “factory” reading nor a “trader” reading is a verdict on honesty or capability. It is a starting question — the label tells you what to check next, not what to conclude.
Read the signal yourself in five minutes
Open the official registry, search the supplier’s exact Chinese legal name or 18-character Unified Social Credit Code, and copy the 经营范围 line from the live record. Note the query date — the record can change.
The full walkthrough, including fuzzy-search pitfalls and no-result handling, is in our registration guide.
Follow the official China company registration search steps →
Go beyond the wording signal
When the decision matters, layer the evidence: the registered identity, the production site, the processes, the certificate scope and the fit for your specific order. And when the portal is inaccessible from your network or the identity will not match, a dated human check from the China side records what was visible — and what was not.
METHOD / 02
How this note was prepared
Currawong Web’s China-side verification desk reviewed the live official sources below on 30 July 2026. Each source is mapped to the narrow claim it supports: that the business scope is a public registration matter, that it is searchable in the official registry, and that registration changes must be filed.
We did not inspect any reader’s supplier, factory, product or transaction. This note is general research guidance, not legal advice, a factory audit, or a product-compliance opinion. A scope reading — ours included — is never proof of where an order is actually produced, and no public-record check can promise a risk-free transaction.
PRIMARY SOURCES / 03
Official sources used for this note
Links and page content were checked on 30 July 2026. The live official record remains authoritative for a specific entity and query date.
- National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity SystemOfficial nationwide market-entity credit search where the live business scope is displayed.
- SAMR — Measures for unified social credit code managementIdentity-code rules behind the registered entity you are searching, effective 1 February 2026.
- State Council — Regulation on market entity registrationRegistration matters, change filing and public disclosure framework for the business scope.