How to Check if a Chinese Company Has Lawsuits: 2026 Guide

If you are sourcing from a Chinese supplier, one of the single most important things you can do before sending money is to answer a very specific question: does this company have a history of being sued?

Not "have they heard of lawsuits." Not "does the salesperson seem nice." The hard, on-the-record question: have Chinese courts issued judgments involving this company, and if so, what happened?

The good news is that China has one of the most aggressive judicial transparency systems in the world. Since 2013, the Supreme People's Court has required most civil and commercial judgments to be published online at 裁判文书网 (China Judgments Online). There is also a dedicated portal for enforcement records and a public "dishonest debtor" blacklist. You can, in theory, look up nearly any company's litigation history for free.

The bad news: these systems are in Chinese, they require a Chinese mobile number for full registration, and the judgments themselves are dense legal documents written in a specific format that takes practice to read. Most foreign buyers bounce off the first login screen and give up.

This guide walks you through the entire process in plain English. We will cover where the lawsuits actually live, what kinds of lawsuits matter, how to interpret the results, and how to decide whether what you find is a yellow flag, a red flag, or a deal-breaker. By the end, you will be able to answer "does this Chinese company have lawsuits?" with real evidence instead of a guess.

Why Lawsuits Matter, Even for Small Suppliers

A common reaction when I tell foreign buyers to check Chinese litigation records is: "My supplier is small. They would not have lawsuits. They are family-run." This is almost always wrong.

In China, even small trading companies and small factories end up in court for a mix of reasons:

• Contract disputes with other domestic buyers: Someone did not pay, someone did not ship, someone shipped defective goods. These are the most common commercial cases and are often a decent signal of how the company handles disputes.
• Labor arbitration: Unpaid wages, improper dismissal, social insurance issues. Small suppliers fight these constantly, and a pattern of unpaid wages is a signal of cash-flow problems that eventually affect your order.
• Intellectual property infringement: Copied designs, counterfeit branded goods, trademark violations. For anyone sourcing private-label products, this is the single most important lawsuit category to check.
• Supplier-to-supplier disputes: Your factory sued its own raw-material supplier, or vice versa. Usually a sign of a stressed supply chain.
• Administrative cases: Fighting a fine from a government agency — market regulator, customs, environmental bureau, tax authority.

Here is the key point: a lawsuit by itself is not a red flag. Companies that do business end up in court eventually. Big companies have hundreds of cases. What matters is the type, the role (plaintiff or defendant), the outcome, and — most importantly — whether the company has become an Executee (被执行人) or ended up on the Dishonest Debtor List (失信被执行人). Those two statuses are very different from "was sued once in 2019," and this guide will show you exactly how to tell them apart.

Types of Lawsuits in China

Before you start searching, it helps to understand what kinds of lawsuits you will encounter. Chinese law divides cases into several procedural buckets, each with its own signal value.

1. Civil Cases (民事案件)

These are private disputes between two parties. Contract disputes, tort claims, real estate, marriage and inheritance, and — critically for you — sales disputes (买卖合同纠纷), service contract disputes (服务合同纠纷), and supply contract disputes (供应合同纠纷). Most lawsuits you care about as a buyer will be civil cases.

2. Commercial Cases (商事案件)

In Chinese practice, commercial cases are a sub-category of civil cases but are often handled by specialized commercial divisions. These include corporate governance disputes, shareholder actions, and financial instrument cases. If the company has major commercial litigation, it is worth a closer look at whether the company is financially healthy.

3. Labor Arbitration and Labor Cases (劳动争议)

Labor disputes go first to arbitration (劳动仲裁), and only appealed decisions reach the regular courts. A cluster of labor cases — especially unpaid wages (拖欠工资) — is one of the best operational red flags you can find. A company that cannot pay its workers is a company that cannot reliably deliver your order.

4. Intellectual Property Cases (知识产权案件)

IP lawsuits are handled by specialized IP courts and divisions. These include patent infringement (专利侵权), trademark infringement (商标侵权), copyright infringement (著作权侵权), and unfair competition (不正当竞争). If you are sourcing private label or licensed goods, an IP case against your supplier as defendant is a serious concern.

5. Administrative Cases (行政案件)

These are disputes between companies and government agencies. The company is fighting a regulator's decision. These are informative but less common in supplier due diligence, unless you see the company repeatedly fighting the Market Regulation Administration (市场监督管理局) or the Customs Administration (海关总署).

6. Criminal Cases (刑事案件)

Rare in B2B due diligence, but critical when they appear. If company officers have been convicted of fraud (诈骗罪), contract fraud (合同诈骗罪), or production of counterfeit goods (生产销售伪劣产品罪), you should treat this as a hard no-go.

7. Enforcement Cases (执行案件)

These are not "lawsuits" in the usual sense — they are the post-judgment process of collecting what the winning party is owed. Enforcement records live in their own database (see below) and are arguably more important than the underlying judgments, because they tell you whether the company is actually paying.

The 3 Main Databases You Need to Know

There are three official portals run by the Supreme People's Court of China. Each holds a different slice of litigation information. You need all three to get a complete picture.

1. 裁判文书网 (China Judgments Online) — General Judgments

• URL: https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/
• What it holds: Published civil, commercial, criminal, administrative, and IP judgments and rulings from courts at every level.
• What it is best for: Understanding whether a company has been sued, how often, for what, and what the outcome was.
• Caveats: Not every case is published. Cases involving state secrets, minors, personal privacy, and certain settlement agreements are withheld. Coverage also thinned noticeably after 2021, when new internal rules limited mandatory publication. Treat 裁判文书网 as "a large sample, not a census."

2. 执行信息公开网 (Enforcement Information Disclosure) — Enforcement Records

• URL: https://zxgk.court.gov.cn/
• What it holds: Enforcement cases, consumption-restriction orders (限制消费令), "被执行人" (Executee) status, and more.
• What it is best for: Finding out whether a company has refused or failed to comply with a court judgment against it.
• Caveats: Enforcement data is updated by each local court, so there can be lag. A company that lost a judgment three weeks ago may not yet appear as an Executee.

3. 失信被执行人名单 (Dishonest Debtor / Judgment-Defaulter List)

• URL: Accessible via https://zxgk.court.gov.cn/ (same portal, different tab)
• What it holds: Companies and individuals that a court has determined are willfully refusing to comply with a judgment.
• What it is best for: The single cleanest signal that a counterparty is dangerous. Being on this list means an actual Chinese judge reviewed the company's behavior and concluded it is dishonestly evading enforcement.
• Caveats: Companies can be removed from the list after they pay or settle, so always note the date of the record and compare it to the date of your check.

Step-by-Step: Searching 裁判文书网 (China Judgments Online)

Let's walk through an actual search. I will pretend we are verifying a company called 上海某某贸易有限公司 (Shanghai Mou Mou Trading Co., Ltd.) with a Unified Social Credit Code of 91310115MA1K23XXXX. Replace this with your real target company.

Step 1: Navigate to the Site

Open https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/ in a browser. You will see the homepage of China Judgments Online. The entire interface is in Simplified Chinese. If you are not fluent, right-click and "Translate to English" in Chrome — the site translates reasonably well.

Step 2: Handle the Real-Name Registration Requirement

Since 2018, the full text of judgments on 裁判文书网 is restricted to registered users. Registration requires:

• A Chinese mobile phone number (required for SMS verification)
• A real Chinese national ID number or a passport/foreign ID, depending on the sign-up path
• A username and password

Foreign users without a Chinese mobile number cannot fully register. You have three options:

1. Partner with someone in China who can register and share results with you. A Chinese-speaking colleague, a hired researcher, or a verification service.
2. Use a third-party aggregator. Companies like Qichacha (企查查), Tianyancha (天眼查), and Qixinbao (启信宝) re-host 裁判文书网 data in a searchable, paid interface and do not require individual real-name registration. They are generally reliable but may miss recent cases.
3. Order a verification report. This is what services like ChineseCheck do — we have registered access to the official portals and pull fresh data on demand.

Step 3: Search by Company Name

Once you are inside, use the main search bar. Your best query is the Chinese name, not the Pinyin romanization. Chinese courts almost never write "Shanghai Mou Mou Trading Co., Ltd." — they write "上海某某贸易有限公司".

How to get the Chinese name if you only have the English version:

• Ask the supplier for their business license (营业执照). The Chinese name is printed at the top.
• Search the company on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (https://www.gsxt.gov.cn/) using the English name or USCC — it will return the official Chinese name.
• See our 18-digit business registration number guide for USCC details.

Paste the Chinese name into 裁判文书网's search bar and hit search. You will see a results list showing every published judgment where that exact company name appears.

Step 4: Search by Unified Social Credit Code (USCC)

Company names in China can be non-unique (multiple companies with the same short name in different regions), so a more precise search is by Unified Social Credit Code (统一社会信用代码) — the 18-character identifier on the business license. 裁判文书网's advanced search supports this field directly.

Step 5: Filter and Sort

Use the filters on the left side of the results page to narrow down:

• Year (年份) — Start with the most recent 3 years, then expand backwards.
• Court level (法院层级) — Basic courts (基层法院), intermediate courts (中级法院), high courts (高级法院), Supreme People's Court (最高人民法院).
• Case type (案件类型) — Civil, commercial, criminal, administrative.
• Document type (文书类型) — Judgment (判决书), order/ruling (裁定书), mediation agreement (调解书), notice (通知).

For each result, note:

1. Case number (案号) — e.g., (2023)沪0115民初123号
2. Role of your target company — plaintiff (原告) or defendant (被告)
3. Cause of action (案由) — the legal category of the dispute
4. Ruling or outcome (结果)
5. Court (法院) and date

Step-by-Step: Searching 执行信息 on zxgk.court.gov.cn

The second critical portal is the enforcement information site. Once a company loses a lawsuit and does not pay, the winning party applies to a court for enforcement — and enforcement status is what really matters for risk assessment.

Step 1: Navigate to https://zxgk.court.gov.cn/

The homepage has multiple tabs. The ones that matter for foreign buyers are:

• 被执行人 (Executees) — general enforcement cases
• 失信被执行人 (Dishonest Debtors) — the blacklist of willful judgment-evaders
• 限制消费 (Consumption Restriction Orders) — issued against company legal reps who fail to pay
• 终本案件 (Terminated Enforcement Cases) — cases where the court gave up collecting because the debtor had no assets (this is a bad sign)

Step 2: Search by Company Name or USCC

Each tab has its own search box. Type the Chinese company name or USCC. Results are usually instant.

Step 3: Interpret the Results

A result under 被执行人 (Executee) means a court has an active enforcement case against the company. You will see:

• Case number (案号)
• Filing court (立案法院)
• Filing date (立案时间)
• Amount subject to enforcement (执行标的)
• Current status (执行状态)

A result under 失信被执行人 means the court has officially added the company to the Dishonest Debtor List. This carries extra information: the specific behavior that justified the listing (typical categories: having the means to pay but refusing; using false evidence to obstruct enforcement; transferring assets to evade enforcement).

How to Read a Chinese Court Judgment

If you have never seen a Chinese court document before, it can feel impenetrable. Here is the decoder ring.

Anatomy of a Case Number

Every Chinese court case has a case number in this format:

(Year)CourtCodeCaseTypeCaseNumber号

Example: (2023)沪0115民初123号

Decoded:

• (2023) — year the case was filed
• 沪 — Shanghai (this is the provincial abbreviation; 京=Beijing, 粤=Guangdong, 浙=Zhejiang, 苏=Jiangsu, and so on)
• 0115 — specific court code (0115 is Pudong New Area People's Court)
• 民 — civil case (民=civil, 刑=criminal, 行=administrative, 执=enforcement)
• 初 — first-instance trial (初=first instance, 终=appeal/second instance, 再=retrial)
• 123号 — the 123rd such case of the year

Once you can read case numbers, you can tell at a glance where a case was filed, what type it is, and whether it is a first trial or an appeal.

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Judgment Format Decoder Table

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Court Hierarchy

Chinese courts are structured in a four-tier hierarchy. Knowing which court heard a case tells you something about severity.

• Basic People's Court (基层人民法院) — district and county level. Handles the vast majority of civil cases. Most supplier contract disputes live here.
• Intermediate People's Court (中级人民法院) — prefecture-level cities. First-instance for larger disputes (generally RMB ≥30m depending on province) and appeals from basic courts.
• High People's Court (高级人民法院) — provincial level. First-instance for very large cases and appeals from intermediate courts.
• Supreme People's Court (最高人民法院) — national level. Final appeals and cases of national significance.

A supplier with a case at the intermediate or high court level is involved in a larger dispute, all else equal. That doesn't automatically mean the company is bad — it just means the stakes are higher.

Ruling (判决) vs Order (裁定)

• 判决书 (Judgment): A decision on the merits of the case. This is the final answer of "who wins."
• 裁定书 (Order): A procedural decision — accepting the case, rejecting the case, granting an injunction, approving a settlement, transferring to enforcement, etc.
• 调解书 (Mediation Agreement): The parties settled with the court's help. Both sides agreed to the terms.

When you read a judgment, the critical section is near the end: "本院认为" (literally "this court finds") followed by the ruling language. That is the reasoning. The final numbered paragraphs state what each party is ordered to do. This is what matters most for risk analysis.

Severity Scoring: A Practical Framework

Not all lawsuits are created equal. Here is the framework we use at ChineseCheck when we score litigation history in our reports. Apply it to whatever you find on 裁判文书网 and zxgk.court.gov.cn.

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Litigation Severity Scoring Table

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Common Lawsuit Types and What They Mean

A quick tour through the most common case causes of action (案由) you will encounter, and what each one tells you.

买卖合同纠纷 (Sales Contract Dispute)

The most common commercial case type. Someone sued someone about a sale gone wrong. As plaintiff, the company is usually trying to collect payment. As defendant, the company is usually accused of not delivering or delivering defective goods. Read the facts carefully.

服务合同纠纷 (Service Contract Dispute)

Services like logistics, consulting, agency. Less common for product suppliers, but common for trading companies and sourcing agents.

加工合同纠纷 (Processing Contract Dispute)

Disputes about contract manufacturing work. Very common for OEM/ODM factories. If your supplier has been repeatedly sued by their own sub-contractors, they are not paying their supply chain.

劳动争议 (Labor Dispute)

Unpaid wages, termination disputes, social insurance. A handful of labor cases is normal. A pattern of unpaid-wage cases over 12-24 months is a serious operational warning.

专利侵权纠纷 / 商标权权属纠纷 (IP Disputes)

Patent infringement and trademark ownership disputes. If you are importing into regions with strong IP enforcement (US, EU, Japan), you cannot afford to source from a supplier with a recent IP infringement judgment against them.

建设工程施工合同纠纷 (Construction Contract Dispute)

Relevant if you are sourcing from a factory that recently built new facilities. A contractor dispute suggests the factory may have over-extended financially.

民间借贷纠纷 (Private Lending Dispute)

Informal lending. When companies show up as defendants here, it often means owners personally borrowed money outside the banking system — a sign of cashflow stress.

金融借款合同纠纷 (Bank Loan Dispute)

The company defaulted on a bank loan. Major red flag for financial stability.

公司决议效力 / 股东知情权 (Corporate Governance Disputes)

Shareholder or director disputes inside the company. A sign of internal conflict that often precedes company breakups.

Language Barrier Workarounds

You do not need to read Chinese fluently to do a useful litigation check, but you do need a workflow.

Google Translate (Document Mode)

For individual judgments, download the PDF from 裁判文书网 (registered users can; third-party aggregators usually export clean text) and upload to Google Translate or DeepL in document mode. Translation quality on legal Chinese is imperfect but usable — you will understand 80% of the content. Pay closest attention to:

• 本院认为 section — the court's reasoning
• Final numbered paragraphs — the actual orders issued
• Party names and case number — verify you are reading the right case

Chinese Language Tools with Legal Vocabulary

• Pleco (mobile/desktop dictionary) has a legal add-on dictionary that decodes terms like 诉讼 (lawsuit), 仲裁 (arbitration), 庭审 (court hearing), etc.
• CNKI Translator handles legal Chinese reasonably well.

Professional Services

For high-stakes deals (orders over, say, $50,000), consider a professional verification service that reads judgments in Chinese natively. The cost of a proper report is tiny compared to the cost of a bad supplier decision.

How to Verify Litigation on Newer Cases (Database Delay)

One challenge: the databases are not real-time. There is always some delay between a judgment being issued and it appearing online.

• 裁判文书网: typical delay 1-6 months. Some courts are faster, some slower.
• Executee database on zxgk.court.gov.cn: usually 1-4 weeks after enforcement begins.
• Dishonest Debtor List: typically within days to a few weeks of listing.

So a "clean" record today does not guarantee a lawsuit-free supplier — it guarantees no lawsuits that have yet been published. For current-case information, you have a few options:

1. Ask the supplier directly. Their answer itself is informative. "Are you currently involved in any lawsuits?" is a fair diligence question. Get the answer in writing (email).
2. Check the court filing websites of the supplier's local court (立案信息). Some courts publish case filings in near-real-time, separate from the judgments database.
3. Use a tracking service. Paid aggregators like 企查查 let you set alerts on a specific company for new filings.
4. Order updated reports before big milestones. If you are about to place a large reorder, a fresh report run within the last 30 days is cheap insurance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does every Chinese lawsuit appear on 裁判文书网?

No. Cases involving state secrets, personal privacy, minors, and some mediated settlements are withheld from publication. Additionally, after 2021, internal court rules gave judges more discretion to withhold publication, and overall publication rates have declined noticeably. Treat the database as a large sample, not an exhaustive registry. For the most sensitive deals, combine 裁判文书网 with the enforcement database and third-party aggregators, and assume you may be missing 10-30% of cases.

I found a lawsuit but the judgment is against "the same name" — how do I know it's my supplier?

Always cross-check the Unified Social Credit Code (USCC) — the 18-character identifier. If the USCC on the judgment matches the USCC on the supplier's business license, it is the same company. If only the name matches but not the USCC, it is a different company. Company names in China can appear more than once in different cities — USCC is the reliable identifier.

What does "被执行人" really mean? Is it the same as being sued?

No. "被执行人" (literally "the one to be executed upon") means the company has lost a lawsuit (or a settlement agreement has taken legal effect) and has not voluntarily paid, so the winning party has asked the court to forcibly collect. It is much more serious than being sued. Being sued means there's an allegation; being an Executee means a court has already ruled against the company and they still haven't paid.

What if my supplier has no lawsuits at all — is that a good sign?

It can be, but it can also mean the company is too new or too small to have been sued yet, or that their cases were settled privately. No litigation record is weakly positive on its own. The stronger signals of reliability are: years in business, active business license, paid-in registered capital, normal tax filings, and active plaintiff-side litigation where the company used the courts to enforce its own rights. See how to verify a Chinese supplier for the full signal framework.

My supplier says "that lawsuit was the other company's fault." Should I believe them?

Maybe. Read the judgment. Look at 本院认为 (the court's reasoning) — that section explains exactly what the court found and why. Chinese courts do give losing parties the benefit of the doubt when the facts support them. But if the company lost and then did not pay, that is a separate, worse issue — compliance with a judgment is not about who was "right" in the underlying dispute.

Can I rely only on 企查查 or Tianyancha and skip the official portals?

For most foreign buyers, yes — these aggregators pull their data from the official portals, and they are accurate enough for go/no-go decisions. However, they are paid services (with limited free previews), their coverage is sometimes 2-8 weeks behind the official databases, and they occasionally miss smaller courts. For critical decisions, verify high-stakes findings directly on 裁判文书网 or zxgk.court.gov.cn, or order a verification report.

Is arbitration (仲裁) publicly searchable like court judgments?

Mostly no. Commercial arbitration in China (typically through CIETAC, BAC, or local arbitration commissions) is confidential by default. You will not find arbitration awards on 裁判文书网. However, if an arbitration award needs enforcement, the enforcement action does appear in 执行信息. So if a supplier quietly lost a big arbitration but never paid, you can still find that pattern on zxgk.court.gov.cn under enforcement cases.

How much does it cost to order a professional litigation check?

A full ChineseCheck company credit report — which includes litigation history, enforcement records, dishonest-debtor status, business registration, legal representative checks, IP filings, and red-flag analysis — costs significantly less than a single bad-faith deposit. Compared to the cost of a lost $5,000-$50,000 order, a $99-$299 report is table stakes.

How This Fits Into Full Supplier Due Diligence

A litigation check is one layer in a complete supplier verification. It should sit alongside:

• Business registration and USCC verification
• Enforcement records check
• Legal representative background
• General supplier verification framework
• Red flags to watch for in Chinese suppliers
• Full company credit report
• Litigation records deep dive

No single check is enough. A company can have zero lawsuits and still be a scam (simply too new to have been caught). A company can have dozens of lawsuits and still be a good supplier (large and active). What matters is the pattern, read across all of these layers.

E-E-A-T: Why Trust This Guide?

Experience. ChineseCheck has processed thousands of litigation checks for foreign buyers sourcing from Chinese suppliers since 2020. The severity scoring and common-case-type analysis in this guide are built from real, repeatedly-observed patterns, not theory.

Expertise. Our analysts are native Chinese speakers with experience reading legal documents from Chinese courts. We work directly with the official government portals, not just aggregators.

Authoritativeness. This guide cites the actual URLs of the Supreme People's Court and its data-disclosure systems (裁判文书网, zxgk.court.gov.cn, court.gov.cn). These are the primary sources of record in China.

Trustworthiness. We do not recommend any supplier. We sell information, not deals. Our only incentive is to be accurate, because buyers who trust a bad report do not come back.

Authority sources cited in this guide:

1. Supreme People's Court, China Judgments Online (裁判文书网): https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/ — the official public database of court judgments.
2. Supreme People's Court, Enforcement Information Disclosure (执行信息公开网): https://zxgk.court.gov.cn/ — the official portal for executee status, consumption restriction orders, and the Dishonest Debtor List.
3. Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China: https://www.court.gov.cn/ — the official government website of the Supreme People's Court, including rules on judicial publication.

Conclusion

A well-run litigation check takes about an hour if you know what you are doing, and maybe three hours the first time. The payoff is huge: you transform a supplier relationship from "I hope this works" to "I have verified the public record and here is what I see."

The framework is simple. Search 裁判文书网 by Chinese name and USCC. Search zxgk.court.gov.cn for enforcement records and Dishonest Debtor listings. Apply the severity scoring table to whatever you find. Decide based on the pattern, not on any single case.

If the supplier comes up clean across all three databases, you have a strong baseline of reliability. If they come up with normal commercial disputes as plaintiff and a couple of resolved contract cases as defendant, that is the normal profile of a working Chinese company. If they come up as an active Executee, under a consumption restriction order, or on the Dishonest Debtor List — stop. Find another supplier. The world has millions of Chinese companies, and the marginal cost of switching is small compared to the cost of getting burned.

This article is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. For transactions involving material legal risk, consult a qualified lawyer with expertise in Chinese commercial law.