China Company Registration Search: The 2026 Complete Guide

Before you wire a deposit, sign a distribution agreement, or hand over tooling to a factory in Guangdong, you need to know one thing with certainty: is the company you are dealing with actually registered, actively operating, and controlled by the people they say it is controlled by?

That single question is the reason China company registration search exists. It is not an optional due diligence step. It is the foundation underneath every other check — the supplier audit, the factory visit, the contract, the letter of credit. If the legal entity on the invoice does not match a real registration record in the government database, nothing else you verify matters. You are doing business with a name on a piece of paper.

The good news is that China has one of the most comprehensive, centralized, and publicly accessible corporate registries in the world. Every legitimately registered mainland Chinese company — roughly 60+ million of them — is listed in a single free government database, updated in near-real-time by the same regulator that issues business licenses. The bad news: that database is in Chinese, built for domestic users, and throws up multiple walls for anyone searching from outside the country.

This guide walks you through the complete 2026 toolkit for searching Chinese company registration records from abroad. We will cover the four practical channels (official government, Chinese commercial databases, English-language services, and registered agents), step-by-step workflows for searching by company name, Unified Social Credit Code, and legal representative, how to read a registration record once you have it, the red flags that should stop a deal, and the most common search failures with fixes that actually work.

The Chinese Company Registration System, In One Page

To search intelligently, you need a mental model of who registers what in China and where that data ends up. Most foreign buyers skip this and then waste hours searching the wrong database.

Corporate registration in mainland China runs on three overlapping layers:

Layer 1 — SAMR (State Administration for Market Regulation). SAMR is the super-regulator created in 2018 by merging the old Administration for Industry and Commerce (AIC), the General Administration of Quality Supervision, and the China Food and Drug Administration. According to SAMR's official portal, it oversees more than 190 million registered market entities across the country. SAMR sets the rules, operates the national database (GSXT), and supervises all provincial-level registration activity.

Layer 2 — Provincial and Municipal AIC branches. The actual issuing of business licenses still happens at the local level. A company registered in Shenzhen is approved by the Shenzhen Market Supervision and Administration Bureau (the former Shenzhen AIC, now operating under SAMR). The city-level bureau issues the paper license, updates the registration record, and handles change filings. This is why you will see the "Registration Authority" field on every license list a specific city or district bureau rather than "SAMR" directly.

Layer 3 — MOFCOM (Ministry of Commerce) for foreign-invested enterprises. If the company is a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE), a Sino-foreign joint venture, or a representative office of a foreign parent, MOFCOM historically maintained a separate approval layer. Since the 2020 Foreign Investment Law consolidated this into the standard registration process, most foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) now appear in GSXT alongside domestic companies, though MOFCOM's enterprise credit portal still carries some historical approval records.

All three layers feed data into the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统), known universally as GSXT — www.gsxt.gov.cn. GSXT is the canonical, official, free, public database of Chinese corporate registration. Everything else you might hear about (Qichacha, Tianyancha, Qixinbao, ChineseCheck) pulls data from GSXT and repackages it.

For the legal foundation of all this, the 2014 Interim Regulations on Enterprise Information Publicity (《企业信息公示暂行条例》), issued by the State Council, require every registered Chinese company to publish its registration information, annual reports, and material changes through GSXT. The 2019 revisions to the Company Law and the 2020 Foreign Investment Law reinforced this transparency mandate. Public registration search in China is not a privilege — it is an explicit policy choice by the Chinese government.

What Data Is Publicly Searchable

The scope of what you can retrieve about any Chinese company is surprisingly deep. This is the full surface of publicly searchable registration data:

Identity and Registration Basics

• Full registered Chinese company name (the only legally binding name)
• English name, if one was registered (rare, and never legally binding)
• 18-character Unified Social Credit Code (USCC) — the national ID for the legal entity
• Company type (有限责任公司 LLC, 股份有限公司 joint-stock company, 外商投资企业 FIE, etc.)
• Date of establishment (成立日期)
• Date of approval (核准日期) — last registration update
• Registered business address
• Registration authority (the specific AIC/market supervision branch)
• Operating status — 存续/在营 (active), 吊销 (license revoked), 注销 (cancelled), 迁出 (migrated out), etc.

Capital and Ownership

• Registered capital (注册资本) and currency
• Paid-in capital (实缴资本), when disclosed
• Full shareholder list — both natural persons and corporate entities — with subscribed and paid-in amounts
• Equity pledge records
• External investment records (subsidiaries the company owns)

Governance and Management

• Legal representative (法定代表人) — the single natural person with authority to bind the company
• Directors, supervisors, and senior management (董监高)
• Branch offices and their legal representatives

Operations and Scope

• Approved business scope (经营范围) — often a long paragraph listing licensed activities
• Annual reports for the past 5 years, including employee count ranges, revenue ranges, tax paid, and total assets

Compliance and Risk

• Administrative penalties (行政处罚) — fines, confiscations, license suspensions
• Abnormal operations directory (经营异常名录) — companies that missed filings or vanished from their registered address
• Serious illegal and untrustworthy enterprise list (严重违法失信企业名单) — the regulatory blacklist
• IP pledge records, mortgage records
• Judicial assistance notices

Change History

• Every change to name, address, legal representative, registered capital, business scope, shareholders, directors, or supervisors, with dates.

This last category — change history — is often the richest source of due diligence signal, and we will come back to it in the "Red Flags" section below. For a field-by-field walkthrough of how to read each of these data points, see our guide to how to read a Chinese business license.

The 4 Search Channels: Which One to Use When

There are exactly four practical channels for searching Chinese company registration from abroad in 2026. Each has different tradeoffs on language, cost, depth, and reliability.

Channel 1 — GSXT (the official government database)

GSXT is the primary, authoritative, free source. If the data is not on GSXT, it does not exist in the Chinese regulatory record. Use GSXT when:

• You need the authoritative version of a registration record for a contract, letter of credit, or insurance claim.
• You are spot-checking something a commercial database told you.
• You are willing to spend 20–60 minutes fighting Chinese-only UI, captchas, and occasional IP blocks.

GSXT's limits: it is Chinese-only, it sometimes requires a mainland phone number for real-name verification on advanced features, and the UI was built for domestic users. For a detailed walkthrough of using GSXT as an English speaker, see our GSXT company search in English guide.

Channel 2 — Qichacha and Tianyancha (Chinese commercial databases)

Qichacha (企查查) and Tianyancha (天眼查) are the two dominant Chinese commercial databases. They pull data from GSXT and add features: change history timelines, related-party graphs, risk scoring, court case integration, and keyword search across business scope. Use them when:

• You want to see a company's full change history in one view.
• You need related-party mapping (shareholders' other companies, subsidiaries, legal-rep networks).
• You are comfortable operating in Simplified Chinese UI.

Their limits: freemium paywalls hide shareholder details and annual reports, signup requires a Chinese mobile number for SMS verification, and the English translations (when offered) are machine-generated and unreliable. See our Qichacha and Tianyancha English alternatives guide for workarounds and when they are worth the subscription.

Channel 3 — ChineseCheck (English-language verification service)

ChineseCheck retrieves the registration record directly from GSXT, translates every field into English, cross-references it against SAMR blacklists and judicial records, and delivers a standardized English report in minutes. Use us when:

• You do not read Chinese and need a usable record fast.
• You want a single English document you can forward to a bank, insurer, or legal counsel.
• You are running verification at scale (dozens or hundreds of suppliers per month).

ChineseCheck is the middle path between the free-but-painful GSXT and the expensive-but-thorough law firm option. See our business license verification walkthrough for what we check and how the report is structured.

Channel 4 — Registered agent or law firm lookup (for high-stakes deals)

For high-stakes transactions — M&A, joint ventures, large-volume FOB contracts, IP licensing — the gold standard is still a Chinese registered agent or law firm that combines GSXT extraction with physical address verification, archive research at the municipal AIC bureau, and interviews with the legal representative. This matters especially for foreign-invested enterprises, where historical MOFCOM approval documents may only exist in paper form at the local commerce bureau.

Use this channel when:

• Deal size is large enough to justify USD 500–3,000+ in verification cost.
• You need court-admissible evidence, not just a database extract.
• The target is an older company with pre-2014 history that may not be fully digitized.

Step-by-Step: Searching by Company Name

The most common starting point for a China company registration search is a company name from an invoice, a business card, or a website. There are two forms of the name, and you need to understand the difference.

The Chinese name is the only legally binding name. Every Chinese company has a single officially registered Chinese name, such as "深圳市华强电子有限公司". That string — character for character — is the company's legal identity. Anything else (an English translation, a trading name, a brand) is a marketing artifact with no standing in the registration record.

The English name, when it exists, is informal. Some companies register an English name as part of their business scope, but this is an optional field, not legally binding, and only about 15–20% of companies have one. English names on business cards are usually informal translations the company chose themselves.

Searching by Chinese company name

1. Copy the exact Chinese characters from the business license or invoice. Do not retype — punctuation and character form matter.
2. Go to www.gsxt.gov.cn.
3. Paste the Chinese name into the search box on the homepage.
4. Complete the slider captcha (drag the puzzle piece to fit).
5. The results page will list matching companies. The exact match is usually first; if there are multiple entries, compare the registration authority and address against what you have.
6. Click the company name to see the full registration record.

Searching by English company name

If you only have an English name, your workflow is different. GSXT does not index English names. You need to first find the Chinese name, then search.

1. Google the English name plus "中国" (China) plus 有限公司 (Co., Ltd.) and see if any result exposes the Chinese name. Company websites and Alibaba storefronts often display both.
2. Check the Alibaba/Made-in-China storefront if the supplier has one. The "Company Information" tab usually shows the registered Chinese name.
3. If the company appears on Chinese commercial databases (Qichacha, Tianyancha), English-name search sometimes works there — they maintain fuzzier indexes than GSXT.
4. Ask the supplier directly for the business license PDF. The Chinese name is on the top line.
5. Once you have the Chinese name, proceed as above.

Searching in ChineseCheck

ChineseCheck accepts either the Chinese name or the English name (with fuzzy matching), plus the USCC if you have one. Enter what you have, we handle the translation layer, and the English report arrives within minutes.

Step-by-Step: Searching by Unified Social Credit Code

The Unified Social Credit Code (USCC, 统一社会信用代码) is the 18-character national ID for every registered legal entity in China. It is unique, immutable, and the single most reliable input for a registration search. If you have a USCC, start here.

A USCC looks like: 91310115607296830D

The structure is:

• Position 1 — Registering authority (9 = SAMR, 5 = Civil Affairs, etc.)
• Position 2 — Entity category (1 = enterprise, 2 = individual household, etc.)
• Positions 3–8 — Administrative division code (the city/district where registered)
• Positions 9–17 — The organization code (unique identifier)
• Position 18 — Check digit

For a full breakdown of USCC structure and how to validate it mathematically, see our Unified Social Credit Code explainer.

Workflow

1. Copy the 18-character USCC from the business license or invoice. The code should contain only digits and uppercase letters — no lowercase, no spaces.
2. On GSXT, paste into the search box. USCC search is exact-match and returns at most one result.
3. On Qichacha or Tianyancha, paste into the search box. Same behavior.
4. On ChineseCheck, paste into the verification field. We validate the check digit before hitting the database, catching typos immediately.

USCC search is the fastest and most unambiguous way to verify a Chinese company. Whenever possible, get the USCC first and use it as the primary key for every subsequent check.

Step-by-Step: Searching by Legal Representative Name

The legal representative (法定代表人) is the single natural person with statutory authority to bind the company — sign contracts, take on debt, sue, be sued. Searching by legal rep name is useful when:

• You want to find all companies a specific person controls.
• You suspect a shell company and want to see what else the person runs.
• You are verifying that a person on a business card really is the legal rep of the entity.

Workflow on GSXT

GSXT's homepage search does not accept legal rep name as a primary input — it searches company names and USCCs first. To find companies by legal rep, you have two options:

1. Cross-index through a commercial database. Qichacha and Tianyancha both offer legal-rep search. Enter the Chinese name, the system returns a list of companies where that person is the legal representative, shareholder, or senior manager.
2. Work backwards from a known company. If you know one company the person controls, pull its record on GSXT, then search the individual name in a commercial database to find related-party companies.

Workflow on ChineseCheck

ChineseCheck's legal-rep search accepts either pinyin or Chinese characters. We return a list of active companies, cross-referenced against known legal-rep blacklists (individuals who have been disqualified by Chinese courts from serving as legal representative due to unpaid judgments or regulatory violations).

See our China legal representative check guide for a deeper treatment of this check and the specific risks it mitigates.

What the Registration Record Actually Tells You

Pulling a registration record is the easy part. Reading it — understanding what the numbers and statuses actually mean for your deal — is where most foreign buyers fall short.

Here is how to read a GSXT extract like a due diligence analyst:

Operating status (经营状态). The single most important field. 存续 or 在营 means the company is active and in good standing. 吊销 means the business license has been revoked by the regulator — usually for failure to file annual reports or serious violations; the company legally exists but cannot operate. 注销 means the company has been formally dissolved and no longer exists as a legal entity. 迁出 means the company migrated to another jurisdiction; look for the new registration authority.

Date of establishment vs. date of approval. Establishment date tells you how old the company is. Approval date tells you when the record was last updated — if approval date is from last month, there was a recent change; check the change history.

Registered capital vs. paid-in capital. Since 2014, China has used a "subscribed capital" system: founders can pledge any amount but are not required to pay it in immediately. A company with RMB 100 million in registered capital but RMB 500 paid in has not actually raised RMB 100 million — the figure is an aspirational commitment. Paid-in capital is what actually matters for solvency. Registered capital matters for liability (shareholders are liable up to their subscribed amount).

Shareholders. Who owns what percentage. Watch for (a) offshore holding companies that obscure ultimate beneficial ownership, (b) individuals you cannot independently verify, and (c) rapid equity transfers in the 12 months before you encountered the company.

Business scope. The paragraph that lists what the company is licensed to do. If the scope does not include what the supplier is actually selling you, you have a problem — the company is operating outside its licensed activities, the invoice is likely not tax-compliant, and any disputes will be hard to litigate.

Address. Should be a real physical address. PO boxes, "shared office" virtual addresses, and addresses that match dozens of unrelated companies are weak signals. Strong signals: a factory address matching the one on the supplier's website, a commercial office in a recognized business district.

Annual reports. Should have been filed every year since establishment, by June 30 of the following year. Missed filings trigger listing on the abnormal operations directory — check if the company appears there.

For a full walkthrough of how each of these fields appears on the physical business license and how to extract the same data from a PDF, see how to read a Chinese business license.

Red Flags in Registration Records

After running thousands of verifications, we have a clear pattern of what separates a routine record from a record that should stop a deal. These are the red flags that matter most.

Recent legal representative changes. A legal rep change in the 90 days before you encountered the company is a yellow flag; three or more changes in the past 12 months is a red flag. Legal rep is the person criminally and civilly liable for the company's actions — high turnover often signals internal disputes, attempts to shield the real controller, or exit-planning by a party who knows bad news is coming.

Registered capital reductions. Capital increases are normal business. Capital reductions are not — they require creditor notice and a regulatory filing, and often signal shareholders pulling value out before winding down operations. A company that reduced registered capital from RMB 50 million to RMB 500,000 in the past year is telegraphing risk.

Suspended or abnormal status. Any listing on the abnormal operations directory (经营异常名录) means the regulator has flagged a problem — missed annual report, failed address verification, or failure to disclose material changes. Listing on the serious illegal and untrustworthy enterprise list (严重违法失信企业名单) is a near-absolute deal-breaker.

License revoked (吊销) without cancellation (注销). A revoked-but-not-cancelled company is in zombie state — legally still exists, cannot operate, cannot deregister until liabilities are settled. Companies in this state are sometimes re-used as shell vehicles. Do not do business with them.

Simplified cancellation (简易注销) in progress. Since 2017, small companies with no debts can deregister through an expedited process. Seeing this on a currently-negotiating supplier is a huge warning: they are actively winding down the legal entity you are about to sign a contract with.

Business scope that does not match what is being sold. If the supplier is selling you electronic components but the registered scope is "educational consulting," you are either (a) dealing with the wrong entity, or (b) dealing with a company operating outside its license. Either way, stop and clarify.

Address that houses 100+ other companies. Virtual address services are legal in China, but a factory that supposedly makes industrial equipment should have a factory address, not a registered agent's downtown office tower suite shared with 250 other companies.

Shareholders with recent disqualification records. Chinese courts can bar individuals from serving as legal reps or executives for unpaid judgments (the 失信被执行人 list). A shareholder on this list controlling your counterparty is a deep red flag.

For a comprehensive framework on how to assemble these signals into a verification decision, see our how to verify a Chinese supplier guide.

Common Search Failures and Fixes

Even experienced users hit the same handful of walls when searching Chinese company registration. Here are the failures we see most often and what actually works.

"No results found" for a company you know exists.

Likely cause: you are searching the wrong form of the name. Try (a) the Chinese name instead of English, (b) the USCC instead of the name, (c) a shorter portion of the Chinese name (drop the city prefix), (d) Qichacha or Tianyancha for fuzzier indexing, (e) confirm the entity is actually mainland Chinese — Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan companies are in separate registries.

Captcha keeps failing on GSXT.

Likely cause: your IP is flagged as a bot, or your browser is missing cookies. Try (a) clearing cookies and refreshing, (b) switching to a different browser, (c) using a residential proxy located in mainland China, (d) waiting 30 minutes and retrying, (e) accessing through a VPN terminating in a major Chinese city.

GSXT works but returns truncated data.

Likely cause: advanced features (full shareholder list, some annual reports) require real-name login with a Chinese ID. Workaround: use Qichacha or Tianyancha for the same data, or use ChineseCheck (we handle the real-name login layer on our side).

The USCC on the business license does not match any record.

Likely causes in order of likelihood: (a) typo — check O vs 0, I vs 1, and uppercase vs lowercase; (b) the license is fabricated; (c) the company just deregistered and was removed; (d) the USCC is an old pre-2015 format that was converted. Cross-check by name: if the name exists but with a different USCC, the license you have is probably fake.

The company shows as "cancelled" (注销) but the supplier is still invoicing.

Stop. A cancelled company cannot legally issue tax-compliant invoices or enter contracts. Either you are dealing with the wrong entity and need to clarify which legal entity is actually the counterparty, or the supplier is operating without a valid registration. Both scenarios require immediate escalation.

Translation tool output is unreadable.

Likely cause: GSXT's HTML uses non-standard encoding for some fields. Workaround: copy the text into Google Translate directly rather than translating the whole page, or use ChineseCheck's pre-translated output.

You can find the name on Qichacha but not on GSXT.

Likely cause: Qichacha caches an older record that GSXT has since updated or removed. GSXT is canonical — if GSXT says the company does not exist, it does not. Do not trust commercial database records that cannot be reproduced on GSXT.

FAQ

Is China's company registration database really free to search?

Yes. GSXT at www.gsxt.gov.cn is operated by SAMR and is entirely free for unlimited searches. You do not need to register, log in, or pay. Real-name login is only required for a handful of advanced features. Commercial databases (Qichacha, Tianyancha) and English services (ChineseCheck) charge fees for their convenience layer, not for the underlying data.

Can I search Chinese companies in English anywhere?

Not on the official government portal — GSXT is Chinese-only and that is unlikely to change. The three English-language routes are (1) third-party services like ChineseCheck that translate GSXT extracts, (2) Chinese commercial databases' limited English UIs (machine-translated, unreliable), and (3) a Chinese law firm or registered agent who pulls records and translates them for you.

What is the difference between GSXT and Qichacha / Tianyancha?

GSXT is the official government database, free, authoritative, Chinese-only. Qichacha and Tianyancha are commercial platforms that pull data from GSXT and repackage it with better UX, change-history timelines, related-party graphs, and risk scoring. They require a Chinese mobile number for signup and charge RMB 300–1,500 per year for full access. Their data is derivative and updates on a lag from GSXT.

How fresh is the data?

GSXT updates in near-real-time when a registration change is filed at the local AIC — typically within a few business days. Qichacha and Tianyancha sync from GSXT on a daily-to-weekly cadence. For the very latest status on a fast-moving company, go direct to GSXT. For historical change patterns, commercial databases are often more convenient.

Can I search Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan companies on GSXT?

No. GSXT covers only mainland Chinese registrations. Hong Kong companies are in the Hong Kong Companies Registry (cr.gov.hk), Macau in the Commercial and Movable Property Registry, and Taiwan in the Ministry of Economic Affairs company search. These are separate legal jurisdictions with separate registries.

Is the registered capital figure reliable?

Registered capital is a subscribed commitment, not a cash balance. A company with RMB 100 million registered capital has not necessarily raised that much — it has promised to pay it in at some point under the articles of association. Paid-in capital (实缴资本) is the actual figure. Always check both.

What does "business license revoked" (吊销) mean exactly?

It means SAMR has revoked the company's business license, usually for failure to file annual reports or for a serious violation. The company legally still exists as an entity but cannot conduct business. It must either be formally dissolved (注销) or have the revocation reversed. Never sign a contract with a revoked company — the contract will be hard to enforce and any invoices will be tax-invalid.

How do I verify a foreign-invested enterprise (WFOE or JV)?

Since the 2020 Foreign Investment Law consolidation, most foreign-invested enterprises appear in GSXT alongside domestic companies. Search by name or USCC exactly the same way. For older companies with pre-2020 MOFCOM approvals, supplementary archive research at the local commerce bureau may be required — this is where a registered agent lookup becomes valuable.

Does a GSXT match prove I am dealing with a legitimate company?

It proves the legal entity exists and is in good standing. It does not prove the people you are talking to actually work there, that the factory address matches the registered address, or that the product quality is what they claim. Registration verification is the necessary first step; factory audit, reference checks, and sample inspection are the next steps. See our comprehensive supplier verification guide for the full sequence.

Putting It All Together

A disciplined China company registration search in 2026 runs like this:

1. Start with the USCC if you have one. It is the single most reliable input.
2. Confirm the Chinese name matches what is on the invoice, business card, and website. Name mismatches are the most common way fraud slips through.
3. Check operating status first. 存续/在营 means proceed; anything else means stop.
4. Read the change history. Recent legal rep changes, capital reductions, or address moves are your most actionable signal.
5. Cross-reference with a commercial database for related-party mapping.
6. Translate the final record into English for your internal decision-makers and legal review.
7. Document the check. Save a timestamped copy of the GSXT page or the English extract. Registration data changes; your decision was based on what you saw on the day you saw it.

You now have the complete toolkit: four channels, three search paths (name, USCC, legal rep), a field-by-field reading guide, a red-flag framework, and fixes for the most common failures.

See also our complete overview of the China company credit report — the next layer above registration search, adding financial, litigation, and operational signals on top of the registration baseline this guide covers.

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About This Guide (E-E-A-T)

Experience. ChineseCheck has processed over 50,000 Chinese company verifications for international buyers, investors, and compliance teams since 2021. Every workflow in this guide reflects patterns we encounter daily: where GSXT blocks overseas users, which red flags predict downstream disputes, and which data-freshness tradeoffs matter for real deals.

Expertise. Our research team includes former compliance officers from Chinese state-owned banks, due diligence analysts from Big Four firms, and native Mandarin speakers with paralegal training in Chinese corporate law. We read GSXT records the way our customers' legal counsel needs them read.

Authoritativeness. This guide cites the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), which oversees 190+ million registered market entities; the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on foreign-invested enterprise registration; the 2014 State Council Interim Regulations on Enterprise Information Publicity; and explainers from China Briefing (Dezan Shira & Associates) on practical GSXT usage.

Trustworthiness. We do not fabricate verification results. Every English report we deliver is a translation of a live GSXT extract retrieved at the time of order, with field-level provenance. When a data field is not publicly available, we say so. When a company record cannot be located, we refund.

Last reviewed: April 2026. Chinese registration regulations and GSXT interface update frequently; we review this guide quarterly and re-verify every linked workflow.