Everything we've learned verifying Chinese suppliers and walking factory floors in Guangdong — how to read a business licence, check government records, spot a trading company posing as a factory, and avoid the payment setups that cost buyers their deposit.
The seven things our auditors notice in the first hour inside a Chinese factory when labour violations are being hidden — records, headcount, coached workers, locked doors and bought certificates.
Read article
Certificates get bought, records get rewritten and the second shift never appears on paper. How our in-person ethical audit in China checks wages, hours, safety and worker conditions.
Read article
A buyer's cheat sheet for the GSXT business scope field: the Chinese terms that mean real manufacturing, the ones that mean trading only, and how to tell them apart.
Read article
Where to find a real sourcing agent in China, what they cost, the contract clauses that matter, and eight questions that expose the pretenders.
Read article
How to verify an Alibaba supplier in 2026: gold badges, licences, court records, and the checks that prove you are dealing with a real factory.
Read article
Hundreds of new sourcing agents appear every week. How to tell who has actually stood on a factory floor and who is forwarding your emails.
Read article
Seven practical ways to verify a Chinese supplier before you pay: business licence, GSXT registry, court records, bank match and site visit.
Read article
A field-tested 10-step framework to avoid Chinese supplier scams — the top fraud patterns, red flags, and the pre-wire checks that catch 95% of them.
Read article
Practical ways to reach the actual manufacturer instead of a middleman: business scope, licences, factory address and invoicing checks.
Read article
Read China's GSXT company registry in English without learning Mandarin. 4 practical methods, a field-by-field translation cheat sheet, and what GSXT can't tell you.
Read article
How to find and read a Chinese supplier's court and enforcement records in English, and which judgments should stop a deal outright.
Read article
Twelve warning signs that an Alibaba supplier is not the factory it claims to be, and the verification steps that confirm it either way.
Read article
Real Chinese factories invoice from a company bank account. Why Western Union or personal transfer requests are a hard stop, and what to do.
Read article
Ten checks that separate a Chinese manufacturer from a trading company: business scope, capital, address, invoices and factory answers.
Read article
What to do in the first 48 hours after a Chinese supplier goes quiet on your deposit: evidence, bank recall, and realistic legal options.
Read article
Paying a Chinese supplier's personal account strips your legal protection. What it signals and how to insist on a matching company account.
Read article
Your shipment arrived — wrong product, wrong spec, or wrong quality. The 48-hour evidence-and-escalation protocol that preserves your recovery options.
Read article
Why Chinese suppliers ask for full payment upfront, what it really signals, and polite scripts to push back toward a safer deposit split.
Read article
What it means when a Chinese supplier has no company email or landline, and the quick checks that reveal whether a real business exists.
Read article
Which of the five China factory audit types fits your order, from desk verification to a full technical audit, and what each one costs.
Read article
Is a T/T deposit before production normal in China? Yes. Here is the standard split, when to resist it, and how to protect the balance.
Read article
Five checks between a safe payment to China and a cautionary tale: company account match, licence, contract, court records and staged terms.
Read article
Inside the opaque, middleman-driven trade flooding inboxes with peptide deals that look too good to be true — and usually are.
Read article
The eight official checks we run on every Chinese factory — business license, unified social credit code, ISO 9001, export license, 1688 history and more.
Read article
Independent verification for buyers sourcing from China. What's in the report, how the process works, and why we priced it at $129.
Read article
The 42-point checklist our auditors use inside Chinese factories: licences, machinery counts, QC systems, workers and evidence photos.
Read article
The difference between a pre-shipment inspection and a factory audit in China, when each one protects you, and which to book first.
Read article