Can you find a Chinese company by its English name?

Each name from vPIC was submitted to a licensed Chinese business-information platform from a mainland network egress. This reports the dated workflow used for the study; it does not establish access from other locations today.

For searches with candidates, we retrieved the top result from the same platform and compared its English-name field with the input. Normalisation used uppercase text with non-alphanumeric characters removed. This tests text equality, not whether two records refer to the same legal entity.

The study reports two runs seven hours apart with the same totals. Both used the same platform. This is not a check against a separate source. Equal totals do not prove that each result stayed the same or was correct.

What it cannot say

• It is one dated group. The 106 trailer makers do not stand for all Chinese exporters. This test gives no upper bound for other sectors.
• The paired comparison has 22 entries. It counts search returns. The public file does not say how many firms were checked against a separate source.
• Other name sources were not measured. These results do not predict the success rate for Alibaba storefront names or names from other sectors.
• A matching English name confirms nothing else. Status, scope, export capability and counterparty identity are separate checks.
• One platform, one date. Coverage differs between providers and changes over time. The measurement date travels with the numbers.

Wording corrected 8 September 2026. The values and query date are unchanged. Older archives say “confirmable”. This means the name text matched; it does not mean the firm’s identity was proved. The public summary does not include each query response.

You may quote or reproduce these figures, including commercially, provided the measurement date, frame and limits travel with them. Machine-readable metrics with numerators and denominators are in the data file. The frame comes from our census of Chinese manufacturers in NHTSA vPIC, which readers can re-derive from the vPIC API.

Archived copies, each with its own DOI, resolving independently of this site: Zenodo · Harvard Dataverse.

A citation with everything it needs:

Currawong, “Can you find a Chinese supplier from its English name?”, 106 China-listed trailer manufacturers from NHTSA vPIC searched by the name held in that register from a mainland egress, two same-platform runs, 12 August 2026. https://currawongweb.com/verify/find-chinese-company-by-english-name/ Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21907920

@dataset{currawong_english_name_lookup_2026,
  author    = {Bao L. Zhou},
  title     = {{English-name lookup rates for Chinese manufacturers (NHTSA vPIC frame, August 2026)}},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.21907920},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21907920}
}

This study reports rates, not a service claim. Currawong verifies public records on request and states sources, query dates and limits with every result; it does not certify suppliers.