THE FILE AT A GLANCE · 核查清单
- Pull the official registry file (GSXT) — legal name, credit code, status.
- Read the business scope — production, or trading dressed as production.
- Count the insured headcount — the fastest shell detector there is.
- Sight the hazardous-chemicals licences, and match the names.
- Demand a batch COA that names the producing plant.
- Match the bank beneficiary to the verified entity.
- Walk the plant live on video; satellite-check the address.
- Verify the certificates at the certifier, not the brochure.
- Ask for export evidence to your region.
- Run the disclosure test: "are you the producer?"
Chemical buying punishes optimism. The deposit is wired before the goods exist, the goods are opaque drums of something only a lab can confirm, and the seller is nine time zones away behind an English trading name. The good news: China documents its companies more thoroughly than almost anywhere, in public, for free, if you know which file to pull and which characters to paste. This page is the file. The Chinese terms are included deliberately: the registries speak Chinese, and you can paste every one of them.
THE TEN CHECKS · 十项核查Run the file in order
Pull the registry file — the company behind the English name
WHERE · gsxt.gov.cn · NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CREDIT INFORMATION PUBLICITY SYSTEM · FREE, OFFICIAL
The English name on the website is marketing. The company is the Chinese legal name (中文名称) and its unified social credit code (统一社会信用代码) — an 18-character ID every real Chinese company has. Ask for both, then pull the file on GSXT, the state registry: registration status, registered capital, legal representative, incorporation date, administrative penalties. Everything else on this page cross-references this file.
RED FLAGThey cannot — or will not — give you their Chinese legal name. There is no legitimate version of that.
Read the business scope — production, or trading in a factory costume
WHERE · SAME GSXT FILE, FIELD 经营范围 (BUSINESS SCOPE)
The scope field says what the company is licensed to do. Look for production (生产) versus sales/trade only (销售 / 贸易). A "factory" whose scope contains no 生产 manufactures nothing. For hazardous chemicals the scope says so explicitly (危险化学品) — its absence on a company quoting you acids or flammables is its own answer.
RED FLAGWebsite says "our factory, 20,000 m²"; the scope says trading. That is not a factory — that is a costume.
Count the insured headcount — the fastest shell detector
WHERE · QICHACHA (qcc.com) · TIANYANCHA (tianyancha.com) · AIQICHA (aiqicha.baidu.com), FIELD 参保人数
Chinese companies report how many employees they enrol in social insurance, and the commercial databases surface it. A producing chemical plant carries operators, shift supervisors, lab staff, maintenance — dozens to hundreds of insured people. A reseller carries three. No single number cuts through a supplier's story faster.
RED FLAG"3,000-worker plant" insuring five people. The plant may exist; it just is not theirs.
Sight the licences — hazardous chemicals are a licensed business
WHERE · ASK FOR SCANS; ISSUED BY PROVINCIAL EMERGENCY-MANAGEMENT AUTHORITIES
Producing hazardous chemicals in China requires a production safety licence (危险化学品生产许可证 / 安全生产许可证); trading them requires an operating licence (危险化学品经营许可证). Ask for the scan, check the validity dates, and check that the licensee name matches the registry file from Check 01 exactly. A licence in someone else's name is someone else's licence.
RED FLAG"The licence belongs to our partner factory", and the partner factory somehow can never be named on paper.
Demand a batch COA that names the producing plant
WHERE · THE SUPPLIER'S OWN QUALITY PAPER, AGAINST A REAL BATCH NUMBER
A real producer issues certificates of analysis with the plant's name and a batch number that its lab can stand behind; the SDS manufacturer field tells the same story. A trader selling factory-direct honestly will still hand you a named-plant COA; that is what disclosed sourcing looks like on paper. The COA is also what makes customs clearance and any later quality claim traceable, which is why the import guide keeps returning to it.
RED FLAGThe COA header names only the trading company; batch numbers are missing, recycled, or "available after payment".
Match the money to the name
WHERE · THE PROFORMA INVOICE'S BENEFICIARY BLOCK, AGAINST CHECK 01
The account you wire to should belong to the legal entity you just verified — or to a disclosed, documented affiliate. Hong Kong settlement entities are common in the chemical trade and can be entirely legitimate, when disclosed and papered: same group, named on the contract, consistent across shipments. What has no legitimate version is a beneficiary with no visible relationship to anything you verified.
RED FLAGA personal account. Or a different beneficiary on the second invoice than the first, with a story attached.
Walk the plant live — not a video file
WHERE · A LIVE VIDEO CALL, SAME WEEK YOU ASK; THE REGISTRY ADDRESS ON A SATELLITE MAP
Ask for a live walkthrough: the gate sign carrying the legal name, the production line for your product running, the lab, the loading bay. A plant that exists is easy to show; polished pre-recorded footage proves only that footage exists. Separately, drop the registered address from Check 01 into satellite view: a chemical plant has tank farms, pipe racks and hardstanding, and looks nothing like an office block.
RED FLAGScheduling theater. Weeks of reasons why the camera cannot visit a plant that is supposedly theirs.
Verify the certificates at the certifier
WHERE · CNCA'S PUBLIC CERTIFICATION QUERY (cnca.gov.cn) AND THE CERTIFYING BODY'S OWN REGISTER
ISO 9001 and friends are checkable documents, not decorations. Take the certificate number from the scan and run it at the source: China's certification regulator operates a public query, and the big certifiers run their own. Expired-certificate recycling is endemic; so is borrowing a certificate that names a different entity.
RED FLAGThe number returns nothing, the cert expired two years ago, or it names a company from Check 01's file — just not this one.
Ask for export evidence to your region
WHERE · REDACTED BILLS OF LADING; TRADE-DATA SERVICES IF YOU HAVE ACCESS
A supplier who ships to Southeast Asia can show it: bills of lading with the customer redacted prove the goods leave China, clear somewhere real, and have done so recently. It also quietly confirms who the shipper of record is — read that name against Checks 01 and 05.
RED FLAG"All our export records are confidential." Customers are confidential; the existence of exports is not.
Run the disclosure test
WHERE · ONE DIRECT QUESTION, IN WRITING
Ask flatly: are you the producer? There are two workable answers. "Yes — here is our licence and our plant," which Checks 01–09 will confirm. Or: "No — we are a sourcing desk with named plants behind us, and the plant is on every COA we hand you." Both are honest structures; most of the world's chemical trade moves through the second. The answer that ends the conversation is the yes that dissolves under the file you just built.
RED FLAGThe factory costume: a trader that claims the plant, until the registry, the licence, the headcount and the COA all quietly say otherwise.
SUMMARY TABLE · 危险信号Red flags, read together
| Flag | What it usually means | Your move |
|---|---|---|
| No Chinese legal name offered | There is nothing to verify — by design | Walk |
| Scope is trading; site says factory | Reseller in a factory costume | Re-price the relationship, or walk |
| Insured headcount in single digits | Shell or desk, not a plant | Demand the real producer's file |
| Licence names a different entity | Borrowed credentials | Walk |
| COA without plant name or batch | Quality story cannot be traced | No deposit until a named-plant COA exists |
| Beneficiary ≠ verified entity, undisclosed | Money leaving the verified story | Stop payment discussion entirely |
| Live walkthrough keeps sliding | There is nothing to walk through | Treat every other claim accordingly |
| One flag, promptly explained on paper | Sometimes just messy paperwork | Verify the explanation, then proceed with eyes open |
One flag with a documented explanation is a conversation. Two flags is a pattern. Three is your answer, delivered early and cheaply — which is the entire point of the file.
THE HONEST STRUCTURE · 诚实的结构"Factory or middleman" is the wrong question
Most chemical exports out of China move through trading entities — including the factories' own trading arms. Buying through a desk is not the risk. The risk is disguise: paying factory-story prices to someone whose registry file, licence chain and COA header all describe a different company than the one in the pitch.
What the disclosed version looks like, concretely: the desk tells you it is a desk. The producing plant is named on the quote and on every COA. The licence chain is shown on request without theater. The beneficiary is papered. Ask "which plant, which line, which batch" and the answer arrives in writing, boring and checkable, the way answers about physical goods should be.
If you run these ten checks and the story holds, buy with confidence, from the plant directly or through its desk. If you would rather someone who already lives inside China's factory system run this file before you wire anything, that is literally what a sourcing desk is for.
ANTICIPATED QUESTIONS · 常见问题Asked at the desk
Q1Isn't a Gold Supplier / verified badge on a B2B marketplace enough?
Marketplace verification confirms the company exists and pays its platform fees. It does not read the business scope, count the insured headcount, check the hazmat licence or trace a COA to a plant. It is a real signal — about the account, not the chemistry.
Q2What does all this cost?
The registry file is free. The commercial databases run free tiers that show headcount. Licences and COAs cost an email. The one line item worth paying for is third-party pre-shipment inspection on the first order — a few hundred dollars against a five-figure container is the cheapest insurance in the trade.
Q3Can I do this without reading Chinese?
Yes — that is why the characters are printed on this page. Paste them. The registries are Chinese-first, and machine translation of the results is good enough to answer the only questions that matter: what is the scope, how many insured people, whose name is on the licence.
Q4How long does the file take to build?
About thirty minutes of desk work for Checks 01–06 and 08–09, once you have the Chinese name. The live walkthrough is scheduling. If a supplier stalls the file past a week, the stall is itself a data point.
Q5The sample was perfect. Doesn't that settle it?
A clean sample proves the sample. Production-lot quality is proven by the batch COA from the named plant plus, on early orders, third-party inspection at loading. Samples are necessary, never sufficient; switched-lot disappointment is the oldest trick in the trade.