China Supplier Verification Checklist: 6 Stages Before You Pay

Most importing mistakes happen because buyers skip steps. Not out of laziness. Usually because a supplier seemed responsive and professional and the product looked right, so they moved fast. Then the goods arrived wrong, or didn’t arrive at all, and the money was gone.

This checklist won’t guarantee a perfect order. What it does is make sure you’ve collected the information that would reveal most problems before they cost you. Go through each stage in order. Don’t skip ahead.

At the bottom, there’s a scoring framework. If you’re hitting too many missing items in any one stage, that’s your signal to slow down.

Stage 1: Initial Research Checklist

Do this before you contact a supplier. Everything in this stage is public information.

Business license lookup. China’s National Enterprise Credit Information System (gsxt.gov.cn) is a free public database. Search the supplier’s company name in Chinese. A legitimate registered company will have a record showing their registration date, legal representative, registered capital, and business scope. If you search and find nothing, that’s a hard stop. If the registration date is within the last 12 months, that’s a significant flag. Companies with 2 or more years of registration have at least survived one business cycle.

The company name in Chinese is on their Alibaba profile, their website footer, or their business license if they’ve shared it. Google Translate handles the character conversion. The gsxt.gov.cn search requires the Chinese name.

Registered address verification. Take the registered address from their business license or platform profile and check it on Google Maps satellite view. A factory should show an industrial building. Multiple factory buildings. Loading docks. Parking. If the pin lands on a residential apartment complex or a commercial office tower, the registered address doesn’t match a manufacturing operation. That doesn’t automatically mean fraud, some trading companies register in one location and work from another, but you need to understand what you’re actually dealing with.

Platform history check. On Alibaba, look at their trade history (number of transactions and cumulative value), how long they’ve been a Gold Supplier, whether they have Verified Supplier status (third-party audit), and their response rate. A supplier with 5 years of Gold Supplier status, 400+ transactions, and a Verified badge is meaningfully different from a 6-month-old account with 3 transactions.

Activity span check. The supplier should have been actively exporting for at least 2 years. Newer companies aren’t automatically bad, some are spinoffs of experienced teams. But they haven’t established a track record, and that’s a real risk on your first order.

Cross-platform check. Search the company name on Global Sources and Made-in-China.com. If they appear on multiple platforms with consistent information, that’s a positive signal. If the information conflicts (different company name, different address), investigate why.

Stage 1 scoring: 5 items. If you can’t complete the business license lookup and address verification, pause. Those two items are non-negotiable.

Stage 2: First Contact Checklist

This stage happens during your first few messages with a supplier.

Response time. A serious exporter responds to new buyer inquiries within 24 hours on weekdays. This excludes Chinese public holidays (the Golden Week holidays in February and October can mean 7 to 10 days of no response from an otherwise solid supplier). If a supplier takes 4 or 5 days to respond to a basic product inquiry during normal working weeks, that’s what you can expect when you have a production problem.

Email address. The supplier should have a company email address. The domain should match their company name or website. A salesperson using @gmail.com, @qq.com, or @163.com for all business correspondence is a yellow flag. Chinese workers often use QQ or 163 for personal mail, but established exporters have company email. If you ask and they say they only communicate by WeChat, ask why they don’t have company email. The answer tells you something.

Technical question response. Ask one specific technical question about the product. Something that requires real product knowledge: a tolerance spec, the specific IC chip used, the battery chemistry, the waterproof rating testing standard. If the salesperson answers clearly and specifically, they’re either technically competent or have fast access to an engineer. If they answer vaguely or copy-paste from the catalog page, they’re likely a trader with limited production access.

Business license willingness. Ask the supplier to provide a copy of their business license (营业执照, yíng yè zhí zhào). Legitimate suppliers send this immediately without question. Any hesitation or refusal is a major red flag. The license should show the same company name as their platform profile.

Video call agreement. Ask for a video call or video tour of the facility. A real factory agrees. They might need to schedule it a few days out, but they agree. A factory that refuses video calls, or that offers only a photo tour of a room with one machine in it, is hiding something.

Stage 2 scoring: 5 items. Missing 2 or more here: find a different supplier.

Stage 3: Video Call Checklist

Schedule the video call during production hours, not at 5 PM on a Friday. You want to see the factory when it’s working.

Factory vs office location. The call should connect from a production environment, or at minimum from a location where the person can immediately walk you to the production floor. If the call is clearly from a residential apartment or a small office with no visible production, and they describe the factory as “at another location,” you’re talking to a reseller.

Production equipment visible. For electronics: you should see relevant equipment. PCB assembly requires SMT (surface mount technology) machines, pick-and-place machines, reflow ovens. Final assembly requires workstations with tooling appropriate to the product. Ask them to pan the camera. If the equipment you see doesn’t match the product they claim to make, ask directly.

Production knowledge conversation. Move past the sales rep if possible. Ask to speak with someone in production or engineering. Ask: what’s your current monthly capacity for this product? What are the main quality control checkpoints? What happens if a batch fails incoming quality inspection on components? A sales rep recites numbers. A production person tells you about real constraints and real processes. The difference is obvious.

Monthly capacity. You need a real number. Not “we can handle any order size.” A factory that makes 10,000 units per month of a product has a fundamentally different operation than one making 200,000 per month. Your order size relative to their capacity affects how much attention your order gets and how realistic their lead time quote is.

QC procedure. Ask what percentage of units they inspect before shipment, what the defect rate threshold is for rejection, and what happens to rejected units. A factory with real quality systems knows these numbers. “We check everything” without specifics means nothing.

Stage 3 scoring: 5 items. This stage is where trading companies expose themselves. If the video call doesn’t look like a working factory, don’t proceed.

Stage 4: Sample Order Checklist

Order a sample before committing to production. This is non-negotiable for any first order.

Shipping origin. The sample should ship from the same city and, ideally, the same address as the factory. If the factory is in Shenzhen but your sample ships from Guangzhou or from a Shenzhen address that doesn’t match what you verified, ask why. Samples that come from a different location than the claimed factory are sometimes drop-shipped from a third party, meaning the supplier doesn’t actually make the product.

Product and packaging together. A production-representative sample includes both the product and the packaging it will ship in. If you get a product with no packaging, or packaging clearly pulled from a different product, you haven’t seen what your customers will receive. Request the full packaged unit.

Certifications on packaging. Check the packaging for required certifications: CE for Europe, FCC for the US, RoHS markings for electronics with hazardous material restrictions. If the certifications are claimed on the platform listing but absent from the sample packaging, ask for the actual certification documents. Certificates can be verified. Supplier-printed logos cannot.

Delivery time accuracy. Note when the supplier said the sample would ship, and when it actually arrived. If they quoted 5 days and it took 18, that’s your preview of production lead time management. Consistent on-time performance on a sample is a good predictor of production delivery accuracy.

Stage 4 scoring: 4 items. A sample that fails 2 or more items here is not a fixable problem with better communication. It’s a supplier problem.

Stage 5: Pre-Production Checklist

You’ve approved the sample and you’re ready to commit to a production order. Don’t pay before completing this stage.

Signed spec sheet. The product specification should be in writing, agreed, and signed (or confirmed in writing by email) by both parties. The spec covers dimensions, materials, colors, packaging, any certifications required, and any test standards that apply. A verbal agreement about product specs is worthless in a dispute.

Payment terms in writing. The payment terms should be confirmed in writing before you send a cent. Standard terms for a first order with a new supplier: 30% deposit before production, 70% balance before shipment after a pre-shipment inspection. Some suppliers push for 50/50, which is acceptable. Any supplier demanding 100% upfront from a new buyer is asking you to take on all the risk. Don’t do it.

Production timeline committed. The production start date, the expected completion date, and the latest acceptable ship date should be in writing. Vague commitments like “about 30 days” are not commitments. “Production begins March 10, expected ready-to-ship by April 5” is a commitment.

Inspection booked. Book a third-party pre-shipment inspection through QIMA, SGS, V-Trust, or a comparable firm. Do this before production starts so the inspection date is set and the supplier knows an inspector is coming. QIMA starts at around $300 per inspection for a single-day visit in most Chinese manufacturing cities. For orders over $5,000, this is cheap insurance.

Stage 5 scoring: 4 items. All four should be complete before you pay the deposit. If the supplier resists the written spec or the inspection booking, that resistance is information.

Stage 6: Before First Payment Checklist

Your hand is on the wire transfer button. Stop and confirm the following.

Bank account name matches company name. The beneficiary name on the bank account should be the same company you’ve been dealing with. If the supplier sends you payment details and the beneficiary name is a different company or an individual’s name, stop. Call the supplier to confirm. A legitimate supplier will understand why you’re checking. If they pressure you to send anyway, don’t.

Payment goes to company account, not personal. Payments should go to a corporate bank account. The account number should be at a recognized Chinese bank: Bank of China, ICBC, Bank of Communications, China Merchants Bank, and similar. Personal accounts, accounts at obscure banks, and accounts in third countries are all flags.

Final terms confirmed by phone or video call. Before sending your first payment to a new supplier, call them. Confirm the total amount, the bank account details, and what the payment covers. This takes five minutes. It also confirms that the bank account details you received by email haven’t been intercepted and changed by a third party (business email compromise is a real risk in international wire transfers).

Stage 6 scoring: 3 items. All three. No exceptions.

Scoring Framework

Each stage has a specific number of items. Here’s how to interpret your results.

If 0 items are missing in any stage: proceed with normal caution.

If 1 item is missing in any stage: investigate why. Some items have legitimate explanations. A supplier might not respond within 24 hours because of a holiday. A video call might need to be rescheduled. Get the item resolved before moving forward.

If 2 or more items are missing in any single stage: pause the process. This is your indicator that something isn’t adding up. Additional investigation before proceeding is required. Start by going back to the stage where items are missing and trying to complete them directly.

If 3 or more items across any two stages are missing: stop and find a different supplier. The risk profile of this supplier is too high for a first order.

The checklist doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. It eliminates the most common categories of fraud and supplier failure. Use it every time, even when a supplier feels trustworthy. Especially then.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the gsxt.gov.cn business license search in English? No, the site is Chinese-only. You can use your browser’s built-in translation (Chrome’s right-click translate works reasonably well) to read the results, but the search itself requires the company’s Chinese name. Get the Chinese name from the supplier’s Alibaba profile, their website, or their business license document. Copy and paste it into the search field.

What if the supplier refuses to do a video call? Walk away. A legitimate factory has no reason to refuse a video call. They do them constantly for buyers worldwide. Refusal to show you the facility means they either don’t have one or they don’t want you to see what it looks like. Either way, that supplier is not someone you want to trust with a deposit.

Do I need to hire an inspection company for every order? For your first order with any new supplier, yes. For subsequent orders with a proven supplier on a standard product, you can reduce inspection frequency once you have a track record. But every first order with every new factory should have a third-party pre-shipment inspection. QIMA at $300 per inspection is less than 1% of a $30,000 order value.

How do I get the supplier’s Chinese company name? It’s usually in their platform profile on Alibaba or Global Sources. Look for the company registration information, which often includes the Chinese name alongside the English trading name. You can also ask the supplier directly. Any legitimate exporter will give you their company name in Chinese without hesitation.

What happens if a supplier passes all stages and the order still goes wrong? This checklist reduces risk, it doesn’t eliminate it. Quality issues can still happen with verified, experienced factories. That’s why the pre-shipment inspection in Stage 5 matters: catching problems before goods ship is far cheaper than disputing after arrival. If you have Trade Assurance coverage and a signed spec agreement, you have documented grounds for a dispute. Without those, you’re negotiating from a weak position regardless of how thorough your verification was.

Can I use a sourcing agent instead of doing this myself? Yes, and a good agent handles most of these verification steps as part of their service. The tradeoff is cost (agents typically charge 5 to 10% of order value or a fixed fee per order) and the need to vet the agent itself. A bad sourcing agent introduces a new layer of risk rather than reducing it. If you use an agent, ask them specifically how they verify suppliers and what their process looks like. An agent who can’t answer that question clearly is not worth hiring.