You can usually find out within a day whether a Chinese supplier makes the product itself, and most of the evidence is in free government databases. No single record settles it. The business licence, the annual report, the environmental permit register and the customs register each tell you part of the story, and you read them together. The more important point is what you do with the answer: a trading company is not a reason to walk away, but it is a reason to rewrite the contract.
Buyers usually ask us whether a supplier is "legit". The better question is narrower: which company will actually make my product, and is that company bound by what I sign? On Alibaba, a factory tour video and a "Manufacturer" label are cheap to produce. Neither tells you which legal entity owns the production line in the video.
Why does it matter whether the supplier is a factory?
Price is the reason most buyers care, and it is the least important one. A trading company adding 10 to 20 percent may still be worth it if it manages quality and logistics well.
The real issues are legal. If you sign an NNN agreement with a trading company, the factory that holds your drawings has signed nothing. If you pay the trading company for molds, the molds sit in a factory that may say it never agreed they belong to you. If a batch fails, your claim is against a company that may have a small office, a few staff and little to seize. Since China's revised Company Law took effect in July 2024, shareholders must pay in subscribed capital within five years, but a large registered capital figure still tells you what was promised, not what is in the bank.
None of this is a problem if you know about it and contract for it. It becomes a problem when you discover it after a dispute starts.
What does the business licence tell you?
Start with the exact Chinese name and the 18-digit unified social credit code, and look the company up on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (gsxt.gov.cn). Do not rely on the English name on the website or the invoice; English names are not registered and two companies can use the same one.
Three things on the licence are worth reading closely. The business scope: a manufacturer will normally list production or manufacturing of the relevant products, while a pure trader lists sales, wholesale or import and export. This is a signal, not proof, because a trading company can register a manufacturing scope it never uses. The registered address: an office tower in a city centre and a plot in an industrial park point in different directions, and you can compare it with the address in the factory video. The shareholders and legal representative: a trading company and a factory owned by the same family is common, and it tells you which entity to bring into the contract.
Also check whether the company is on the list of abnormal operations. Under the Regulations, a company that fails to file its annual report or cannot be reached at its registered address can be listed, and a supplier with that flag deserves a direct question before you pay.
What does the annual report add?
Every company files an annual report on the same system. Contact details, operating status, shareholders' subscribed and paid-in capital and changes in equity must be published; headcount, assets, revenue and tax figures are published only if the company chooses to.
In practice, the most useful line is often the number of employees covered by social insurance. Since the 2016 annual reports, companies must report social insurance data, and the types of insurance and the number of insured employees have to be published; a company cannot choose to hide them (2016 joint notice of the former SAIC, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the National Bureau of Statistics, Gong Shang Qi Jian Zi [2016] No. 226). A "factory" with 300 workers on its website and four insured employees is either a trading desk or a company with a labour compliance problem. Either way you want to know before you send drawings. Treat this as a strong indicator rather than a legal conclusion: the figure is self-reported, and some factories use labour dispatch or under-insure workers.
Environmental permits and customs records
Two less obvious registers are often more telling than the licence.
Manufacturers that discharge pollutants must either hold a pollutant discharge permit or complete a discharge registration on the national permit platform (permit.mee.gov.cn), which is public. Injection moulding, painting, electroplating and textile dyeing usually leave a trace there. A trading company has no reason to appear. The absence of a record is not conclusive, since simple assembly may fall outside the permit system, but a supplier claiming to mould your plastic parts in-house with no environmental footprint is worth a question.
Customs records answer a different question. Since 30 December 2022 a company no longer needs a separate foreign trade filing to export, but it still needs customs registration as a consignor or consignee. China Customs' enterprise credit platform (credit.customs.gov.cn) shows whether a company is registered, its credit rating and any customs administrative penalties. That tells you whether the supplier can export in its own name. It does not tell you whether it makes anything. Many genuine factories export through an agent, and many traders export in their own name.
Court records and the one question to ask on a video call
Search the company on the national enforcement information platform (zxgk.court.gov.cn) for judgments it has failed to pay and restrictions on its executives. A supplier listed as a dishonest judgment debtor is a hard stop for us; it means a court has already tried and failed to collect from it. Published judgments are worth searching too, but coverage is incomplete, so a clean result proves less than a bad one.
Then do the simple thing. On a video call, ask the supplier to walk from the gate, where the company name is displayed, to the line making your product, and to show the business licence on the wall. If the name on the gate is not the name on your contract, you have your answer. For larger orders, a third-party factory audit is worth the cost.
The supplier is a trading company. What now?
Our view is that you should not cancel by reflex. A good trading company can be the right partner for small and mixed orders. What you should not do is sign a contract that pretends the trading company is the manufacturer.
Name the factory in the contract and prohibit moving production to another factory without your written consent. Bring the factory into the NNN agreement, either as a party alongside the trading company or through a separate NNN signed and sealed by the factory itself. Have the factory sign a mold confirmation letter that lists each mold, states that you own it and waives any right to keep it. Make the trading company liable for the factory's breaches, so that you have one counterparty for quality and delivery. These points belong in a three-party structure rather than a standard two-party manufacturing agreement; see our article on NNN agreements and Chinese factories for how the agreement itself should be drafted.
Two things we do not recommend. Do not treat paid platform badges or an automated database report as a substitute for reading the records yourself or having a lawyer read them. And do not pay a company other than the one you signed with, whether it is a Hong Kong affiliate, a "sister company" or a personal account, unless the contract expressly names that payee. Mismatched payees are the most common way buyers lose the ability to prove who they paid and for what.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I check a Chinese company without a Chinese name? Not reliably. Ask the supplier for its full Chinese name and unified social credit code before you sign anything; a genuine supplier will give them without hesitation.
- Does an export licence prove the company is a factory? No. China abolished the separate foreign trade filing in December 2022, and customs registration only shows the company can export in its own name.
- Is a trading company less trustworthy than a factory? Not necessarily. The risk is not the trading company itself but a contract that does not reach the factory holding your drawings and molds.
- How long does a supplier background check take? Searching the public records usually takes a few working days. A site visit or third-party audit takes longer and costs more, and is worth it for large or tooling-heavy orders.
Related service: Supplier Background Checks ↗
Not sure who is really making your product?
We check the supplier's registration, annual reports, permits, court records and related companies under Chinese law, and tell you who to contract with and how. Fixed fee, delivered in three working days.
Related Reading
- NNN Agreements in China: How to Stop Your Chinese Factory from Copying or Selling Your Product
- Chinese Factory Won't Return Your Molds? Tooling Ownership and How to Get It Back
This article is general information on PRC law as of 9 October 2026 and does not constitute legal advice. The answer in any matter depends on its documents and facts.