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Technical Sourcing

The method

How to verify a Chinese supplier

Anyone can send a buyer a list of links. The work is establishing which of those companies actually manufactures, what it really makes, what it has actually quoted, and what you have not been told.

This is the method we run, in the order we run it, with what each check proves and what it cannot. You can do most of it yourself, and you should.

Written for buyers importing from China. The examples are from a live engagement — a body-worn camera programme for a Nigerian client — and no figure on this page is illustrative.

The problem

A shortlist of ten companies is rarely ten companies

The failures below are not hypothetical. Each one was found in a single category, in one engagement, by running these checks.

A buyer arrives with a list from a marketplace, a trade fair or an introduction. It looks like competitive tension: several suppliers, several prices, a range to negotiate within. Underneath, some of those companies do not manufacture, some are the same company, and some of the prices are not quotations at all.

Verification is what converts that list into something a decision can rest on. It is also the cheapest stage to buy and the most expensive one to skip, because every later cost — samples, travel, tooling, a container — is spent on whatever the list said was true.

Found in one category, on one engagement

  • Two separately listed companies resolved to the same firm by normalised web domain. Two “independent” quotations were not independent.
  • One company disclosed, under direct questioning, that production actually sits with a different firm entirely.
  • Two models published with identical specifications under different part numbers.
  • One quotation naming two different chipsets for the same unit.
  • Three prices captured from chat messages with no minimum order quantity, no lead time and no validity period.

The checks

Eight checks, in the order that saves the most time

Identity first, then entitlement, then capability, then price. Running them in this order means the companies that were never going to work drop out before anyone spends a week on a specification.
01

The business licence

营业执照

What it is

Every mainland Chinese company has one, carrying its registered Chinese name, its unified social credit code — an eighteen-character identifier — its registered address, its legal representative and the date it was established. Ask for a photograph of it. A company that will not send one has told you something.

How to read it

Work from the Chinese name and the credit code, never the English trading name. The English name on a website has no legal standing and is frequently not the entity you would be contracting with. The code can be checked against the national enterprise credit information publicity system, which is public and free.

What it cannot tell you

That the licence belongs to the people you are talking to. A licence can be borrowed, and an image can be edited. It is the start of identity, not the end of it.
02

The business scope

经营范围

What it is

The licence states what the company is registered to do, in fixed official language. Manufacturing appears differently from wholesale, retail and import-export: production wording describes making things, trade wording describes selling them.

How to read it

A scope that lists only sales and import-export belongs to a trading company, whatever the website says and whatever photographs of a production line are on it. Read the scope against the catalogue too — a scope confined to electronic components does not cover a finished, certified device.

What it cannot tell you

Scope is registered breadth, not current activity. A company can be registered to manufacture and have stopped, or subcontract everything. It rules companies out reliably and rules them in only provisionally.
03

Registered capital

注册资本

What it is

The capital the shareholders have subscribed. It appears on the licence and in the public register, and it is the number most often quoted at buyers as evidence of substance.

How to read it

Subscribed is not the same as paid in. Read it against the age of the company and the scale being claimed: a firm founded recently, claiming several production lines, with a modest subscribed capital, is telling you three things that do not fit together. Treat it as one weak signal among several, never as proof.

What it cannot tell you

Solvency, or whether the money was ever contributed. A large registered capital is not a credit check and does not survive contact with one.
04

Export entitlement

进出口权

What it is

The right to export in the company’s own name, which is separate from the right to manufacture. A factory can be entirely genuine and still not hold it.

How to read it

Ask directly: do you export under your own name, and if not, whose name goes on the export documents. If a third party appears at that point, they are part of your transaction — find out who they are before the goods exist, not while they are on a quay.

What it cannot tell you

Anything about your own side of the border. Import licensing, standards conformity and duty in the destination country are separate questions with separate answers.
05

Manufacturer, or trading company

Why it is the pivotal question

A trading company can be a perfectly reasonable counterparty. What it cannot do is answer for the production line, control a change to the specification, or hold the price when its own supplier moves — and it will rarely tell you that its answers are relayed.

How to tell

Four signals, in ascending order of usefulness. The business scope. The address: an industrial park reads differently from a floor of an office tower. The coherence of the catalogue — a “manufacturer” offering body cameras, LED lighting and phone cases is trading. And a process question they must answer from the floor: who cuts the tooling, who does the board assembly, who writes the firmware, what the yield is on the current run. A trader will fetch the answer, and the delay is the answer.

The strongest single test

Ask for a live video call from the line, at short notice, on a working day. It is cheap, it is fast, and it is the request that most often ends a conversation.

What it cannot tell you

Whether the line you are shown is theirs. Video establishes that a line exists and that they can reach it, not who owns it. That is what a visit is for.
06

Normalised web domains

What it is

Take every supplier’s website, strip the protocol, strip the subdomain, lowercase it, and reduce it to the bare domain. Then sort the list and look for repeats.

Why it matters

Two listings under two different company names sharing one domain are one firm. Do this before you count your quotations, because a comparison built on suppliers that are not distinct is not a comparison — it is one company bidding against itself, and the price range it produces is decoration.

From the live engagement

Among twenty-three companies assessed in one category, two separately listed companies resolved to the same firm this way. Both had quoted.

What it cannot tell you

Common ownership behind different domains, which is more common and much harder. Shared addresses, shared phone numbers, identical catalogue photographs and the same legal representative are the next signals to check.
07

The catalogue against the claim

What it is

Collect the company’s own published specification sheets and set them against each other and against what they have told you. This is unglamorous and it is where most real findings come from.

What to look for

Two models published with identical specifications under different part numbers: one product with two names, or a specification sheet nobody maintains. A single quotation naming two different chipsets for the same unit: the document was assembled from other documents rather than from the product. Specifications that change between the catalogue, the marketplace listing and the quotation, with no revision anywhere.

From the live engagement

Nineteen products were captured with 244 specifications, translated from Chinese, and compared attribute by attribute. Both faults above were found doing exactly this.

What it cannot tell you

What the unit in front of you actually does. A specification is a claim in a document until a sample and an inspection test it.
08

Direct questioning

What it is

Putting the uncomfortable question to a person, in Chinese, and staying on it. Not a questionnaire, not a form, and not through a marketplace messaging window.

Why it is not optional

Documents record what someone filed. They do not record what is true today. On the live engagement, one company stated under direct questioning that production actually sits with a different firm entirely — a fact that appears in no register, invalidated the basis on which they had been shortlisted, and produced a new manufacturer lead worth pursuing.

How to ask

Ask who makes it, not whether they make it. Ask what happens if you change one attribute. Ask what their minimum order quantity is for this exact configuration rather than for the family. Ask the same question twice, a week apart, and compare the answers.

What it cannot tell you

Anything, if the person answering has no incentive to be candid. This is the check that depends most on who is asking, in what language, and whether they will be embarrassed to ask again.
Is it a quotation, or a number in a chat window?A quotation states the quantity it applies to, the minimum order quantity, the unit price, the incoterm, the lead time and how long it is valid. Miss any of those and you have an indication, not an offer. On the live engagement three captured prices had no minimum order quantity, no lead time and no validity period, and they are recorded as indicative — never promoted into the comparison.

Recording the answer

Confirmed, refuted, or not established

Most supplier checklists are ticks and crosses. A binary forces a guess on every check that is still open, and a guess recorded as a fact is worse than no record at all.
Confirmed

We hold a document or a direct answer that establishes it, and the record names which one. Confirmed means checkable by you, not believed by us.

Refuted

We checked and the claim does not hold. This is a finding in its own right and it is recorded with the same evidence trail as a confirmation.

Not established

We looked and the evidence is not there yet: the document exists but we do not hold it, the register was ambiguous, or the company has not answered. Absence, not failure.

The third state is the one that costs something to keep. Early in an engagement most fields are empty, and a page of quiet grey looks like nobody has done any work. The temptation is to round “not established” up to “confirmed” on the checks that are probably fine. Resisting that is most of the discipline.

It matters because a buyer needs to know which of their assumptions is still an assumption. If export entitlement is not established on the supplier you are about to order from, that is not a gap in a report — it is the next thing you should do something about, and it is only visible if nobody smoothed it over.

Provenance, on every finding

  • Who established it.
  • When — because a licence check is a statement about a date, not a permanent property.
  • Against which document, held and viewable rather than described.

A finding without those three is an opinion with a tick beside it. Nobody can re-check it, and nobody can argue with a specific part of it.

Do this yourself

Before you reply to anyone

Eight steps, none of which require us. Run them on the list you already have and it will get shorter.
  1. 01Ask each company for a photograph of its business licence, and work from the registered Chinese name — not the English name on the website.
  2. 02Check the eighteen-character unified social credit code yourself against the national enterprise credit information publicity system, and confirm the name matches.
  3. 03Read the business scope. If it describes only sales and import-export, you are talking to a trading company.
  4. 04Reduce every supplier’s website to its bare domain, sort the list, and look for repeats. Repeats are one firm, and your quotation count is wrong.
  5. 05Put two of their own published specification sheets side by side. Identical specifications under different part numbers, or two chipsets named for one unit, tells you the sheets are assembled rather than measured.
  6. 06Ask one process question only the factory floor can answer: who cuts the tooling, who does the board assembly, who writes the firmware.
  7. 07Ask whether they export in their own name. If not, ask whose name goes on the documents, and write that company down too.
  8. 08Check that every price you hold states quantity, minimum order quantity, incoterm, lead time and validity. If it does not, label it indicative in your own notes before it hardens into a budget.

What the checklist cannot do for you

The finding that mattered most came from asking a question a document search cannot ask.

A company that had passed every documentary check said, when pressed directly on who actually manufactures, that production sits with a different firm entirely. No register holds that. It changed the shortlist and it produced a new manufacturer lead.

That is the part that needs a person in Shenzhen, working in Chinese, willing to ask the same uncomfortable question a fourth time. Everything above this line you can do from your desk — and you will get further than most buyers ever do.

From the live engagement

One category, twenty-three companies

A body-worn camera programme for a Nigerian client. Every figure below is recorded in the client’s workspace with the evidence behind it.
23

Assessed

Manufacturers identified and checked.

244

Specifications

Across 19 products, translated from Chinese and compared attribute by attribute.

2

Listings, one firm

Caught by normalised domain. Two quotations that were not independent.

3

Indicative prices

Captured from chat with no MOQ, lead time or validity. Recorded as indicative, not as quotations.

Verification establishes who a company is and what it is entitled to do. It is not a quality-systems audit, not a credit check, and not a guarantee of performance. We are a buyer-side practice: clients contract and pay manufacturers directly, we never hold client funds, and no factory pays us.

Keep reading

The seven stages

Where verification sits in the engagement, and what the stages either side of it produce.

How it works

How findings reach you: the charter, the workspace, the review and the approval.

What we source

Security and surveillance hardware, and the six purchases hiding inside one.

This page describes general method and public sources. It is not legal advice, and registers change. Where a check matters to a decision, confirm it against the register on the day you rely on it.