The Chinese Business License (营业执照): A Field-by-Field Guide

Every legitimate Chinese company has a single document that is the foundation of its corporate identity: the Business License (营业执照, yíng yè zhí zhào).

This is the Chinese equivalent of a Certificate of Incorporation, but more compressed — the entire document is one page, and it contains the nine pieces of information you need to begin any verification.

A Chinese supplier that cannot or will not produce its Business License is, with rare exceptions, not a legitimate business. Asking to see it is the most basic and uncontroversial request a foreign buyer can make.

The nine items on a Chinese Business License

When you receive a Business License from a counterparty (typically as a scanned PDF or photo), check each of these fields.

1. Unified Social Credit Code (统一社会信用代码)

An 18-character alphanumeric ID. This is the company's permanent ID number — China's equivalent of a Companies House number or EIN. It does not change when the company rebrands. We cover this in detail in our USCC guide.

2. Entity Name (名称)

The company's legal name in Chinese characters. This is the only legally binding form of the company name. Any English name on a website, brochure, or contract is the company's own translation and has no legal force.

3. Company Type (类型)

The legal form of business organisation. Common types you will encounter:

4. Legal Representative (法定代表人)

The natural person legally authorised to act on the company's behalf. They can sign contracts without a separate power of attorney; anyone else needs one. They are also personally exposed to certain enforcement measures.

This single field is one of the most important in cross-border contracts. We cover it in depth in our Legal Representative guide.

5. Registered Capital (注册资本)

The amount of capital the shareholders have committed to contribute. This is not the same as money currently in the company's bank account. Most Chinese small and mid-size companies have paid-in capital far below their registered capital — sometimes zero.

We unpack this distinction in Registered Capital vs. Paid-in Capital.

6. Date of Incorporation (成立日期)

The date the company was legally established. Older companies are generally more substantiated than newer ones, though this is a soft signal rather than a hard rule.

7. Term of Operation (营业期限)

The defined operational period. You will commonly see one of:

• 长期 ("long-term") — no defined end date
• A specific end date (e.g., "2046年12月31日")

If the term has expired and the company has not renewed, it is technically operating outside its registered period.

8. Business Scope (经营范围)

The activities the company is registered to conduct. This is the field most often skipped by foreign buyers — and it is critical for export transactions. Chinese law requires the Business Scope to explicitly cover both the goods category and the import/export wording. Missing either, and the supplier cannot lawfully complete export documentation.

See Business Scope for the full three-part test.

9. Address (住所)

The registered address. Note that for many small Chinese companies (excluding factories), the registered address is not the actual operating address. It may be a shared registered-address service, a former office, or a paper address.

For factories, the registered address is usually the actual production site. For trading companies, expect a mismatch.

The official seal in the corner

In the bottom-right corner of every legitimate Business License is a red official stamp from the issuing SAMR authority, with the issue date.

This stamp is part of the document. It is not the same as the company's own corporate seal (公章), which we discuss separately. The SAMR stamp on the License signifies that this specific Business License was issued by the registration authority — but the document can still be Photoshopped to alter individual fields.

How to verify a Business License is authentic

A scanned Business License is essentially a JPEG. It can be modified in a graphics editor by anyone with basic skills. Never treat the license itself as proof of legitimacy. The only way to verify is to cross-check against the live registry.

The procedure:

1. Take the Unified Social Credit Code (or legal Chinese name) from the Business License.
2. Search GSXT using that identifier.
3. Compare every field on the GSXT record with every field on the Business License image you received.

If even one field differs, the Business License is either fake, out of date, or belongs to a different company.

Common scam patterns

Three patterns recur in cross-border supplier fraud:

Pattern 1: Photoshopped name. A real Business License from one company, with the legal name field crudely Photoshopped to a different name. Easy to detect with a GSXT cross-check.

Pattern 2: Genuine but expired. A real Business License from a company in revocation or deregistration. The document looks authentic because it is — it just doesn't reflect current legal status. GSXT will show the actual current status.

Pattern 3: Real license, wrong company. A Business License that is real and authentic, but belongs to a tiny trading company unrelated to the factory the buyer believes they are dealing with. This is the most insidious version because the document checks out against GSXT — the trick is the buyer was never told who they were really contracting with. Detecting this requires comparing the license against everything else: the bank account holder, the email domain, the factory address, the photos of the production line.

Why this matters more than English documentation

Foreign buyers often invest heavily in reviewing English-language brochures, ISO certifications, factory tour videos, and supplier audit reports — all of which are easy to fabricate.

The Business License, cross-checked against GSXT, is the one document that cannot be faked, because the verification source is the Chinese government itself. It is also the cheapest verification step you can take: free, takes a few minutes, and surfaces the most common forms of identity fraud.

If you are about to send a wire transfer to a Chinese supplier and you have not done this check, stop and do it.

What's next

Once you can read a Business License, the next critical concept is the legal Chinese name. The license has it, but understanding why this name (and not the English version) is the only legally meaningful identifier is the single most valuable insight in this entire guide series. Continue to Find the Legal Chinese Name.