Original measurement46 query inputs · three fields
China scope records: 0 of 46 mention manufacturing without trade wording.
Manufacturing and trade wording can appear in the same business scope. Of 46 returned entries, 39 had both; none had manufacturing alone. Use these words to frame your factory questions. They do not establish capacity or who will make your goods.
1. Capital fields do not show a current cash balance
A capital field is a recorded amount. It does not show how much cash is available today. Paid-in contributions can include non-cash assets, and a returned figure is not proof that a payment was made. The legal rules also depend on company type and dates; see the sources below.
| What the record shows | Entries | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Paid-in value present and equal to the subscribed figure | 16 of 46 | 34.8% |
| Paid-in value present and below the subscribed figure | 13 of 46 | 28.3% |
| Paid-in field empty | 17 of 46 | 37.0% |
| Shareholder-contribution entries returned | 18 of 46 | 39.1% |
Subscribed capital on this frame was numeric and labelled CNY in 44 of 46 entries. It ranged from ¥100,000 to ¥1,023,855,833, with a median of ¥9,000,000. Two entries had no parsed capital value. Lower paid-in values and empty fields are separate findings.
What differs between the two groups
The 17 entries with an empty paid-in field had an average founding year of 2017. Their median subscribed value was ¥3,000,000, using the 15 numeric CNY amounts. The 29 entries with a paid-in value (63.0% of 46) averaged 2011, with a median subscribed value of ¥20,000,000. These differences do not explain why a field was empty.
Our earlier study used a different saved frame of 264 names; its original provincial source records remain unconfirmed. Its results should be read with its own frame and method. This comparison does not show that age, size or a legal deadline caused the difference in returned fields.
2. Status is a state (never a grade), and it is written three ways
The platform returned 存续 for 26 entries, 开业 for 19 and 仍注册 for one. These are the stored labels. We did not confirm each entity’s identity or current status against an official source for this study.
The records contain 11 company-type strings. Folding full-width and half-width brackets leaves ten. The set includes a branch and other entity types; one legal rule cannot be applied to the whole set without checking which entity each record describes. The company-type study examines these labels in more depth, using the same 46 records.
Read the status together with its source and date. A platform label does not establish solvency, trading history or delivery capacity.
3. Scope wording does not verify factory capacity
| Business scope wording | Entries | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Mentions sale, wholesale, retail or trade | 45 of 46 | 97.8% |
| Mentions manufacture, production or processing | 39 of 46 | 84.8% |
| Mentions both | 39 of 46 | 84.8% |
| Mentions manufacture without mentioning trade | 0 of 46 | 0% |
| Mentions trade without mentioning manufacture | 6 of 46 | 13.0% |
| Mentions import-export wording | 36 of 46 | 78.3% |
The stored flags show both production and trade terms for 39 of 46 entries. Six matched trade terms alone; one matched neither. We have no verified factory/trader labels against which to test these groups. The counts do not show how well scope classifies a supplier.
The stored scope lengths have a median of 193 characters across all 46 entries, including one zero-length value; the longest is 591. A licensed-project or general-project phrase matched in 30 of 46 entries (65.2%). No time series or full scope text was retained, so this does not measure a trend in wording.
4. Method, and what this study cannot say
The frame came from earlier searches with one candidate and a non-empty code field. There were 45 18-character strings and one 8-character string. The filter did not validate codes or confirm identities. Two commercial-platform interfaces were queried once per input: base information and shareholder contributions. No retry.
The parser recorded the platform’s no-result code as no-record and a success code as present. For shareholder entries it read one page, requested at a size of 50. Empty paid-in values stayed separate from numeric zero. Original responses were not retained, so the stored fields cannot establish complete official coverage or why a value was missing.
What it cannot say
- An empty field is not proof of non-payment. This is a platform observation. It does not establish what a company paid or published.
- Nothing here evaluates a supplier. These are field-level properties of a record. They are not judgements about any company.
- One platform, one day. The data comes from a licensed Chinese business-information platform. It does not come from the government portal directly. Platform coverage is not identical to official coverage.
- A selected lookup frame. The inputs came from a trailer-manufacturer lookup. They are not a representative sample of Chinese suppliers.
- Keywords do not prove an activity. The stored flags cannot confirm a factory, a product licence or work done for an order.
Questions about this study
Does large registered capital mean a Chinese supplier is financially strong?
No. A registered amount is not a current bank balance. In these 46 platform records, 16 paid-in values matched the subscribed amount, 13 were lower and 17 were empty. None of those observations verifies solvency or an actual contribution.
What does an active status label tell me?
Read it as a dated record label from the named source. This study stored three labels across 46 entries; it did not confirm every entity against an official source or test delivery capacity.
Can business scope confirm that a supplier runs a factory?
The keyword counts here cannot do that. Production and trade terms overlapped in 39 entries. We did not retain verified factory or trader labels, so we cannot measure classification accuracy.
Why were some paid-in fields empty?
The retained data do not tell us. The groups differ in average founding year and recorded capital, but that does not establish a cause. Do not infer payment, non-payment or concealment from an empty platform field.
PRIMARY SOURCES / 05
Rules behind the field interpretation
The measurements came from a commercial platform. These official rules explain legal distinctions; they were not the data source for the 46 queries.
- Company Law, Articles 40, 47, 48 and 98Disclosure duties, limited-company subscriptions, non-cash contributions and the separate rule for share companies.
- Company Registration Measures, Articles 5, 8 and 11Company-type rules, transition arrangements and disclosure timing. Effective 10 February 2025.
For limited liability companies, the general rule is payment within five years of formation, subject to stated exceptions. Share-company founders follow a different rule. Companies formed before July 2024 have transition arrangements. These rules do not explain why a particular platform field is empty. Checked 8 September 2026.
Citing this study
Correction, 8 September 2026: we corrected the input description, median calculation and interpretation. The original downloads and archive title remain unchanged. Their capital median of 10 million CNY and scope-length median of 194 use the upper middle value; the usual medians are 9 million and 193. No queries were rerun.
You may quote or reproduce these figures, including commercially, provided the measurement date, the frame and the stated limits travel with them. The JSON contains one row per input; the CSV contains summary metrics. These include the parsed capital figures, status, company type and the scope-wording flags. Download the data file (JSON). Natural-person names are not stored: the legal representative and shareholder fields appear as presence and counts only.
Archived copies, each with its own DOI, resolving independently of this site: Zenodo · Harvard Dataverse.
A citation with everything it needs:
Currawong, “China registration fields: what the returned fields show”, 46 selected commercial-platform records queried 28 August 2026; interpretation corrected 8 September 2026.
https://currawongweb.com/verify/registered-capital-business-scope-china/Dataset:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22145056
BibTeX
@dataset{currawong_registration_fields_2026,
author = {Bao L. Zhou},
title = {{What Chinese registry fields guarantee: paid-in capital, registration status and business scope across 46 manufacturers (August 2026)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22145056},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22145056}
}NEXT CHECK
Read the scope without treating it as a site check.
Paste the business-scope text for a free wording reading. Use the result to frame questions about the proposed production site; it cannot establish factory capacity.
Seeing a large registered capital and wondering what it means? Compare registered and paid-in capital; neither shows cash available for your order.
If you want records pulled for your own supplier: the “Just check who they are” selection of the report menu covers them, packs from $26.55. First paid order: unhappy for any reason, tell us within 14 days of delivery and it is refunded in full.