Verifying a Chinese supplier from Europe: why GSXT does not work, and what does
Open any sourcing guide and you will read the same sentence: "check your Chinese supplier for free on GSXT, the official national registry." It is the single most repeated piece of advice in the industry. From Europe, it is also unusable. We tested all four registries from a French IP address. Tianyancha answers, word for word: "access is temporarily not supported in your current location. Current location: FR". Aiqicha displays 中国大陆以外的地区暂不支持访问 — access not supported outside mainland China. Qichacha returns a WAF block. And GSXT, the official registry, redirects to a real-name registration that requires Chinese ID and a Chinese phone number. This is not a friction you can work around. It is a wall. Most guides pointing you there have never tried from Europe. This article covers what you can actually verify — and a good part of it is computed without any website at all, so nothing can block it.
What you can check for free, without any website
Every Chinese company has a USCI number (统一社会信用代码, "unified social credit code") printed at the top of its business licence. It is the equivalent of a company registration number. It follows the GB 32100-2015 standard, and that standard is public — which means its consistency can be checked offline, on the back of an envelope.
- Exactly 18 characters, no more, no less.
- An alphabet that deliberately excludes I, O, Z, S and V to avoid confusion with 1, 0, 2, 5 and U. A code containing any of those letters is fake.
- The 1st character is the registration authority. A commercial company starts with 9. If it does not, this is not a business you can trade with.
- Characters 3 to 8 are the administrative division code. They must match the city the supplier claims. A "Shenzhen factory" whose code points to another province is either lying or an intermediary.
- The 18th character is an ISO 7064 MOD 11-2 check digit. A number typed at random has roughly a one in thirty-one chance of passing it.
A valid USCI number does not prove the company exists: it can be copied from a real one. It is a necessary condition, never a sufficient one. An invalid number, on the other hand, is a definitive answer.
Factory or trader: the one field that settles it
This is the question that decides your margin, and the one most often asked wrongly. The company name proves nothing: plenty of traders slip 制造 (manufacturing) or 工业 (industry) into their registered name for marketing. The only field that counts is the business scope, 经营范围, on the licence.
- Factory vocabulary: 生产 (production), 制造 (manufacturing), 加工 (processing), 组装 (assembly).
- Trading vocabulary: 销售 (sales), 批发 (wholesale), 贸易 (trade), 进出口 (import-export).
- The trap is the mixed scope, which is the most common case. A company can genuinely manufacture product A and only resell product B. Read line by line — yours may be the B.
- Supporting signal: very low registered capital (注册资本), recent incorporation, and a 100% trading scope. You are dealing with an intermediary; price it accordingly.
The one free official registry that answers from Europe
There is one: the Hong Kong Companies Registry, at cr.gov.hk. Name search is free, the interface is in English, and it responds perfectly from Europe. That detail matters more than it looks. A Guangdong supplier will very often invoice through a Hong Kong entity — that is the norm, not a red flag in itself. And that entity is one you can verify yourself, for free, in minutes.
The paid services that actually work
When formal verification is no longer enough — typically before a first significant payment — you need an independent report. We tested which services are genuinely reachable from Europe and which ones publish their prices.
- China Company Lookup: $69 for an existence check within 24h, $199 for a full report within 72h.
- China Checkup: $129 for a manually reviewed report within one business day.
- Sofeast: the only inspection provider publishing its rates on its own site — $299 per man-day of inspection, $99 to $199 for a supplier background check.
- QIMA, V-Trust, Testcoo: real online ordering, but no public pricing.
- SGS, Bureau Veritas, TÜV, Intertek: technically open to SMEs, but with no self-service path and no published rate. It is a sales process with a quote.
Ballpark for a pre-shipment inspection in China: $250 to $350 per man-day on everyday consumer goods. Against an order worth several thousand euros, the maths makes itself.
The five documented scams, and their tells
The mechanisms below are described consistently by independent sources, and every one of them is detectable before you pay.
- The bank account in an individual's name. The most common, and the easiest to spot: the account holder must match the Chinese company name on the licence, character for character. Personal account, WeChat Pay or third-party company, whatever the pretext — that is a stop, not a negotiation.
- Leaving the platform. "Pay me directly, outside Trade Assurance, you save the fees." Paying off-platform voids the protection entirely. On a transfer to a personal account, no recourse remains.
- Factory impersonation. The profile shows a factory; the reality is a trader in an office, using photos lifted from a real factory's website. AI-generated imagery has made this markedly worse since 2025.
- Forged documents. Retouched licences, ISO, CE or FDA certificates fabricated or copied from another company, fake audit reports. A PDF is trivially editable: it is cross-checking three documents that catches fraud, not the quality of the scan.
- The golden sample. A perfect sample, then a raw-material substitution in mass production. The counter: have the inspection run against the signed and dated sample, never against a spec sheet.
Gold Supplier vs Verified Supplier: the costly confusion
On Alibaba, "Gold Supplier" is a paid subscription. It attests to legal existence and an ability to pay, nothing more. "Verified Supplier" implies an on-site audit by a third party — SGS, TÜV Rheinland, Bureau Veritas or Intertek. That confusion is actively maintained, and it is the one that costs beginners the most. Even an audit has limits: it validates a factory and a quality system on paper, it tests no product. An audited supplier can perfectly well downgrade your particular order. The badge reduces the "shell company" risk, not the "bad goods" risk.
The sequence, from first contact to payment
- Ask for the business licence (营业执照) as a readable scan, before any price discussion. A refusal, a delay, or "we will send it after the order": stop there.
- Check the USCI number and read the business scope. Free, instant.
- Record the exact Chinese company name. The English name has no legal value — it is a trade name.
- Above a certain amount, order an independent report and compare it with the licence you received. Any divergence in status, address or legal representative is disqualifying: the report is authoritative, not the seller's PDF.
- Ask for an unannounced video call from the workshop floor, with the line running. Refusal, pre-recorded video or systematic postponement is a strong signal.
- Check that the bank account holder, the name on the proforma invoice and the licence all three coincide.
- Order a paid sample, sign it, date it, keep one sealed copy.
- Structure the payment: 30% deposit maximum, balance after a passing inspection. Never 100% upfront.
The principle underlying all of it: never validate a document supplied by the seller using another document supplied by the same seller. Every claim must be cross-checked against a source they do not control.
The general method, any country: verify a supplier in 5 steps
