Customs Registration
海关进出口货物收发货人备案
In short
Chinese companies that import or export goods register with customs as consignor or consignee enterprises. The registration is public and carries a credit rating — advanced certified, general certified, general credit, or dishonest. Holding export rights means a company may export; US bill-of-lading data is what shows whether it actually has.
What it proves
- That the entity is registered to conduct import and export
- Its customs credit rating, including whether it is listed as dishonest
- That it is a distinct legal entity in the trade chain
What it does not prove
- That it has shipped anything recently, or ever
- The volume, destination or product mix of its exports
- That the goods it exports are made by it rather than bought in
Two different questions get confused constantly: whether a supplier can export, and whether a supplier does export.
Customs registration answers the first. It is a filing, it is public, and it comes with a credit classification that is worth checking before you wire anything. An entity listed as a dishonest enterprise (失信企业) is a fact you should know about, whatever the salesperson says.
The second question is answered by shipment records, which in practice means US import bill-of-lading data. That data is searchable by company name and shows consignee, shipper, product description, weight and date. If a supplier claims hundreds of containers a year and the record shows six shipments of unrelated goods, the gap is the finding.
Two caveats matter here. Bill-of-lading coverage is strongest for US-bound cargo and much weaker for Europe, so a thin record is not evidence of a thin business — it may simply be a business that ships elsewhere. And the shipper name on a bill of lading is often a freight forwarder or a trading intermediary, not the factory, so name matching needs care.
The practical use of these two sources together is triangulation. Registration says the entity is in the trade. Shipment data says whether the trade is real. Neither one, alone, tells you who makes the product.
Last checked 2026-10
A document tells you what is claimed.
A visit tells you what is there.