Before wiring money to a Chinese company you can check, for free and at the official source, whether it exists, whether it is operational and who legally represents it. The tool is called GSXT and this guide shows you how to use it. We also tell you, honestly, what you will not be able to see from the outside.
What GSXT is
GSXT, 国家企业信用信息公示系统 (National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System), is the official business registry of the Chinese state, run by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Every company legally incorporated in mainland China has a public record at gsxt.gov.cn. If your supplier does not appear there, it does not exist as a registered company, and that is already an answer.
Step 0: get the legal name in Chinese characters
This is the step almost everyone skips and the reason most searches fail. Chinese companies are registered only under their name in Chinese characters. The English name on the supplier's website, on Alibaba or in their email signature is a trading name and is not recorded in any registry: two different companies can use nearly identical English names.
- Ask the supplier for their business licence, 营业执照. It shows the exact legal name and the USCC code.
- If you have an invoice or a contract, the name in Chinese characters and the USCC should appear on them.
- A serious supplier hands over its licence without hesitation. Evasiveness at this request is a signal in itself.
Step 1: search the company on gsxt.gov.cn
- Go to gsxt.gov.cn. The portal is Chinese only; your browser's translator helps with the menus, but enter the search in Chinese characters.
- Paste the full legal name or the USCC code into the search box. The USCC is more reliable because it is unique.
- Solve the captcha. The system uses them aggressively and access from outside China can be slow or fail intermittently. Retry or switch networks if it does not load.
- Select the company in the results and open its registry record.
The reality of access from outside China. The interface is entirely in Chinese. Since 26 November 2021 a search requires real name verification, which in practice means a Chinese mobile number. Requests from foreign IP addresses time out often.
The provincial portals are the usual alternative:sh.gsxt.gov.cn for Shanghai,gd.gsxt.gov.cn for Guangdong, and the equivalent for the other provinces. Note the limit: a provincial portal covers only businesses registered in that province. If you do not know where the company is registered, it will not find it there.
Step 2: read the registry record
These are the key fields and what they mean:
| Field | In Chinese | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Unified Social Credit Code | 统一社会信用代码 | The unique 18 character identifier. It must match the licence, the invoice and the contract. |
| Legal representative | 法定代表人 | The person with legal power to bind the company. Compare it with whoever signs your contract. |
| Registration status | 登记状态 | Look for 存续 (existing) or 在业 (in operation). If you see 注销 (deregistered) or 吊销 (licence revoked), stop. |
| Registered capital | 注册资本 | The capital the company declares. Careful: declared does not mean contributed. We explain it in the registered capital guide. |
| Date of establishment | 成立日期 | A company incorporated months ago that claims 15 years of export experience has something to explain. |
| Business scope | 经营范围 | The authorised activities. If it sells you machinery and its scope is real estate consulting, ask why. |
On machine translation
Chinese is heavily context dependent and meaning shifts easily in automatic translation. Legal Chinese compounds the problem: the register is dense and individual terms carry more than one reading. A browser translator is fine for finding your way around the menus. Reading a registry entry or a court document through Google Translate or an AI translation, and then deciding on it, is not reliable.
Step 3: compare with what the supplier has told you
Verification is not just reading the registry, it is comparing it with the sales story. The most common inconsistencies we come across in our work:
- The name on the destination bank account does not match the registered legal name. This is the most dangerous discrepancy of all.
- The real age of the company does not fit the experience it advertises.
- The person negotiating with you is not the legal representative and does not appear in the company, with no power of attorney in sight.
- The company issuing the invoice is not the factory it claims to be, but an intermediary trading company nobody had mentioned.
What GSXT will not tell you
The free lookup covers the basic layer: existence, status and registration data. Out of your reach remain several layers where the real problems usually surface:
- Litigation and enforcement. Lawsuits, judgments and enforcement files live in separate court archives, in Chinese, and you need to know how to search and interpret them.
- Capital actually paid in. The capital figure you see is generally the subscribed one, not the contributed one.
- Corporate links. Who is behind the company, which other companies share its shareholders and whether any of them carries problems.
- Whether it actually manufactures. The registry does tell you whether it is authorised to, through the business scope. How to read that field is in the guide on factory or trading company. What it does not tell you is whether it still produces today, or at what capacity.
- The full penalty history and operational signals that Chinese commercial data platforms aggregate, with access increasingly restricted from outside China.
Where our work adds to this guide. For due diligence reports, our network of licensed lawyers in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou also consults legal databases reserved for legal professionals in China. It is the difference between an online lookup and a report you can base a decision on.
What the report confirms and what it does not
A verification report confirms the identity and the registered activity of the company: that the legal entity exists, that it is the one it claims to be, and that its registration data matches what it told you. That is the question it answers.
It does not tell you that a supplier is trustworthy, or that it is not. Reliability is a different question and it is measured with other steps: taking and testing samples, having certificates verified by the bodies that issued them, assessing real production capacity, checking the machinery actually in place, and forming a view on business conduct over time.
The report is one part of the process, not the whole of it.
Quick questions
Is the GSXT lookup free and legal?
Yes to both. It is a public registry created precisely so anyone can check the registration data of a Chinese company. Consulting it is standard practice in commercial due diligence.
Can I search with the English name?
Not reliably. The legal name is the Chinese one; the English name is not registered. Always search with the Chinese characters or the USCC code.
What if the company appears and everything matches?
You have ruled out the crudest fraud, which is already a lot. For a small order that may be enough. Above a certain amount it pays to look at the layers GSXT does not show: litigation, paid in capital and corporate structure.
What about the Chinese commercial data platforms?
Someone who reads Chinese and knows the market can pull general company information from the Chinese commercial data platforms. Those platforms republish the data; they take no responsibility for whether it is correct. Our reports come from lawyers we know and have checked, the findings are interpreted by a specialist, and every report carries the signature of the analyst who produced it.