How to Find a Chinese Supplier

No published figure yet. The authority does not publish this cost in a form we could verify and quote, so this guide covers the procedure only: what to bring, in what order, and where it goes wrong. We will add the figures the moment there is a source for them.

In order

1. **Get the registered name, not the trading name.** Ask the supplier for its full registered name as it appears on its business licence, in Chinese characters. A trading name, an English name, or a brand on a website is not the registered name, and a register search on any of them returns either nothing or the wrong entity.
2. **Check the registration date against the 2026 standards.** The State Administration for Market Regulation issued 国市监注发〔2026〕5号, signed on 6 January 2026 and published on 12 January 2026, setting the 2026 editions of the business entity registration document standards and materials standards. From 1 May 2026 registration authorities nationwide use those standards, and the 2022 editions issued under 国市监注发〔2022〕24号 are abolished. A supplier that registered or amended after that date has passed through the new standards; one that did not has not.
3. **Confirm the real-name confirmation was reviewed.** The 2026 standards introduce a real-name registration confirmation form into the document standards. The form records that the applicant confirmed their identity and the consistency of the registration matter, and the notice states its purpose as preventing fraudulent and impersonated registration. Personal identifiers, addresses and mobile numbers move onto a separate page. The notice also requires the registration authority to review whether the applicant completed real-name confirmation, including whether identity or subject-qualification verification took place.
4. **Identify the agent who filed it.** On 11 September 2025, published and effective on 15 September 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the People's Bank of China jointly issued 国市监注规〔2025〕3号, the administrative measures for business entity registration applications and agency conduct. It creates a national registration-agent information system, recording and publishing agents, their institutions, principals, staff, agency business, and persons restricted from filing. Agents must identify themselves through that system and supply their identity and contact information. The system went live on 25 September 2025, according to a government service portal notice. Ask the supplier who filed its registration, and whether that agent appears in the system.
5. **Identify the beneficial owners.** Under the same measures, agents must conduct customer due diligence scaled to risk, including identifying the client and identifying and verifying the beneficial owners of a non-natural-person client. Business and transaction records must be retained in a form that can reproduce and trace the transaction. The buyer's version of this step is to ask for the ownership chain above the registered entity and compare it with what the agent was obliged to verify. Where the two do not match, the mismatch is the finding.
6. **Check for a refusal against the filer.** The measures provide that where a person is designated directly responsible for a registration that is revoked, filings they submit as liaison or agent are refused for a period counted from the date of revocation. That is the condition that turns the agent registry from a directory into a filter — an agent with a refusal against them cannot file, and a supplier whose registration was filed by such a person has a problem that predates your order.
7. **Write the file.** Record the registered name in Chinese, the date of the registration or its most recent amendment, the agent who filed it and whether that agent appears in the national system, the ownership chain, and any refusal recorded against the filer. That file is what a deposit is priced against.

AI Summary

Finding a Chinese supplier is two jobs, and most buyers run them in the wrong order. The first is finding a name. The second is establishing that the name belongs to an entity that exists, is registered, and was registered by someone who is on the record. China’s 2026 registration standards and its registration-agent rule give the second job a fixed set of steps. This article sets out those steps in order, and says what each one produces.

Definition

This article describes the verification procedure a buyer runs on a Chinese supplier before paying a deposit — the registration and agent checks that establish who the counterparty is, which documents evidence it, and which conditions cause a filing to be refused.

The two jobs, in order

A search engine, a trade fair, an agent or a marketplace all produce the same output: a company name, a product, and a contact. That is the end of the first job. It is not evidence of anything.

The second job starts with the name and asks a narrower question: is there a registered business entity behind it, and what does the register say about it? The order matters because every later step — a sample order, a deposit, a production run — is priced against the answer.

Steps

1. Get the registered name, not the trading name. Ask the supplier for its full registered name as it appears on its business licence, in Chinese characters. A trading name, an English name, or a brand on a website is not the registered name, and a register search on any of them returns either nothing or the wrong entity.
2. Check the registration date against the 2026 standards. The State Administration for Market Regulation issued 国市监注发〔2026〕5号, signed on 6 January 2026 and published on 12 January 2026, setting the 2026 editions of the business entity registration document standards and materials standards. From 1 May 2026 registration authorities nationwide use those standards, and the 2022 editions issued under 国市监注发〔2022〕24号 are abolished. A supplier that registered or amended after that date has passed through the new standards; one that did not has not.
3. Confirm the real-name confirmation was reviewed. The 2026 standards introduce a real-name registration confirmation form into the document standards. The form records that the applicant confirmed their identity and the consistency of the registration matter, and the notice states its purpose as preventing fraudulent and impersonated registration. Personal identifiers, addresses and mobile numbers move onto a separate page. The notice also requires the registration authority to review whether the applicant completed real-name confirmation, including whether identity or subject-qualification verification took place.
4. Identify the agent who filed it. On 11 September 2025, published and effective on 15 September 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the People’s Bank of China jointly issued 国市监注规〔2025〕3号, the administrative measures for business entity registration applications and agency conduct. It creates a national registration-agent information system, recording and publishing agents, their institutions, principals, staff, agency business, and persons restricted from filing. Agents must identify themselves through that system and supply their identity and contact information. The system went live on 25 September 2025, according to a government service portal notice. Ask the supplier who filed its registration, and whether that agent appears in the system.
5. Identify the beneficial owners. Under the same measures, agents must conduct customer due diligence scaled to risk, including identifying the client and identifying and verifying the beneficial owners of a non-natural-person client. Business and transaction records must be retained in a form that can reproduce and trace the transaction. The buyer’s version of this step is to ask for the ownership chain above the registered entity and compare it with what the agent was obliged to verify. Where the two do not match, the mismatch is the finding.
6. Check for a refusal against the filer. The measures provide that where a person is designated directly responsible for a registration that is revoked, filings they submit as liaison or agent are refused for a period counted from the date of revocation. That is the condition that turns the agent registry from a directory into a filter: an agent with a refusal against them cannot file, and a supplier whose registration was filed by such a person has a problem that predates your order.
7. Write the file. Record the registered name in Chinese, the date of the registration or its most recent amendment, the agent who filed it and whether that agent appears in the national system, the ownership chain, and any refusal recorded against the filer. That file is what a deposit is priced against.

What sends an application back

The registration standards and the agent measures together describe the conditions under which a filing does not proceed: an applicant who has not completed real-name confirmation, an identity or subject-qualification verification that did not take place, an agent who has not identified itself through the system, and an agent under a refusal. Each of these is a condition stated in the documents, not a judgement about the supplier’s product.

So what

The finding stage is cheap and the verification stage is cheap. What is expensive is discovering, after a deposit has left, that the name on the invoice was never the name on the register.

For the deposit side of the same decision — what a verification check costs against the exposure it protects — see China Put a Face Check on Company Registration, which works the break-even between a check and a deposit on the same two instruments.

How confident

• What we know: The 2026 registration document and materials standards were issued as 国市监注发〔2026〕5号, signed 6 January 2026 and published 12 January 2026, and apply nationwide from 1 May 2026, abolishing the 2022 editions. The standards introduce a real-name registration confirmation form and require the registration authority to review whether real-name confirmation took place. The agent measures 国市监注规〔2025〕3号 were issued 11 September 2025 and took effect 15 September 2025, creating a national registration-agent information system, an agent identification duty, a risk-scaled customer due diligence duty covering beneficial owners, a record-retention duty, and a refusal of filings by a person designated directly responsible for a revoked registration. The agent system went live on 25 September 2025.
• What we do not know: The documents do not state how a buyer obtains an agent’s filing history, whether the registry is searchable by supplier name from outside China, or what a refusal entry looks like on a public record. They do not state how long a registration filed before 1 May 2026 stays without a reviewed real-name confirmation. No official page fetched for this article publishes a fee, a processing time or a cost for any of these steps, so this article carries no figures.
• How to check: The two instruments are 国市监注发〔2026〕5号 (State Administration for Market Regulation, 6 January 2026) and 国市监注规〔2025〕3号 (State Administration for Market Regulation and People’s Bank of China, effective 15 September 2025). Ask the supplier for its business licence and the name of the agent that filed its registration, and confirm the agent’s standing in the national registration-agent information system.

Last checked 2026-11-05, next review 2027-05-04. Every figure above names its source and the date it was read. This page is a guide, not legal, tax or immigration advice — confirm with the authority before acting on a deadline.

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