Reading a Chinese Supplier's Court History When You Don't Speak Mandarin
A Chinese supplier's litigation history is one of the strongest signals of how they treat foreign buyers. The good news: Chinese court records are largely public. The bad news: they're in Chinese, spread across three separate systems, and the interfaces are hostile. Here's how to actually use them.
The three systems you need to know
China Judgements Online (裁判文书网) publishes the text of most court decisions. The Supreme People's Court enforcement list (执行信息公开网) shows companies that lost a case and refused to pay. Credit China (信用中国) aggregates administrative penalties. Together they cover 95% of what a buyer needs.
Search by the Chinese name, not the English one
Every legal filing uses the exact registered Chinese company name from the business licence. Search the English trade name and you'll get nothing. Copy the Chinese name character-for-character or the search fails silently.
Lawsuit types that actually matter to a buyer
Contract disputes (合同纠纷) filed by other buyers are the single most important category — a pattern of them almost always repeats. Product quality suits (产品责任) speak for themselves. IP infringement (知识产权) suggests the supplier copies others' designs, and will copy yours. Labour disputes (劳动争议) in bulk often flag cash-flow trouble. Bankruptcy (破产) is an automatic disqualification.
What the enforcement list means
If a company appears as 被执行人 (dishonest party subject to enforcement), a court has ruled against them and they didn't pay. This is a hard stop for any deal larger than a sample order.
How to read a Chinese judgment fast
You don't need to read the whole thing. Copy the top block into Google Translate — you get case number, parties, court, cause of action, and outcome. That's 80% of what matters. The reasoning section is only useful if you're deciding whether to work with them at all.
Free vs paid options
Everything above is free but slow and Chinese-only. Aggregator tools like Tianyancha and Qichacha compile it into cleaner dashboards for a monthly fee, but still in Chinese. A FactoryChecker report pulls the same data plus the business licence, GSXT record, tax rating, and export licence, translated and summarised, for $129 flat.