You met a supplier at the Canton Fair. What should you look up before you place an order?
The Canton Fair (the China Import and Export Fair) is held in Guangzhou twice a year, and many buyers come home from it with a stack of business cards from suppliers they met for ten minutes. A booth tells you how a supplier presents itself. Before an order, five records tell you which company you would actually be paying.
Clacta is independent and not affiliated with the Canton Fair or its organiser, China Foreign Trade Centre.
1. The registered name and the code
Ask for the company's registered Chinese name and its 18-character Unified Social Credit Code, as printed on its business licence. The English name on a card or a booth sign is chosen by the company and is not the name in the Chinese business register. Every other check below starts from the code.
2. Is the company still active?
The business register records whether a company is active, has been cancelled or is on the list of abnormal operations. A licence photo shows the day it was taken; the register shows today. A company can be cancelled while its website, catalogue and booth design live on.
3. Is it the company that makes, signs and invoices?
One group often trades under one English name through several legal entities: a trading company, one or more factories, an office in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Ask which entity makes the product, which one signs the contract and which one issues the invoice. When the answers point to three different companies, look each one up. The one that matters most is the one that answers for the order if something goes wrong.
4. The certificates, by number
Ask for certificate numbers, not only PDFs, and look each one up in the register of the body that issued it. A document records the day it was issued; the register records what happened since.
5. On file with Chinese customs
A company that exports in its own name has to be on file with Chinese customs as a consignor of export goods. A supplier without that filing can still sell to you through an export agent; it's worth knowing which way the goods will leave.
When the records don't add up
Sometimes they won't: a professional website and booth, contact details in two different places, and a registered company behind the website that has been cancelled. That isn't proof of anything on its own. Groups restructure, and a new entity may carry on the business. But until you can name it, you can't say which company would answer for the order if something went wrong. Put the question to the supplier before an order: which company am I dealing with now, and what is its code?
What Clacta shows
A Clacta report starts from the registration code: the registered name, the code, the status in the business register and the registered address. Where the company is on file with customs or holds certificates, the report lists them, each with the record it comes from. When a name can't be matched to exactly one registered company, Clacta says so and doesn't guess.
Sources
- Chinese business registration records, as made by the market regulation bureau that registered each company
- The CNCA-approved certification body named on each certificate, for the certificates it issued and their status
- China customs, for the companies on file as consignors of export goods
- China Import and Export Fair, cantonfair.org.cn (the fair's own description), read 2026-10-07
Cross-check, Clacta.