Your supplier's business license checks out, the registry status reads 存续 (active), and the registered capital looks respectable. For most importers, the verification stops right there. But a Chinese company's real risk profile usually lives somewhere else: in its court and enforcement records.
These records are not hard to reach. Judicial records about companies in China are largely public — you can see whether a company has been sued, whether it failed to pay after losing a case, and even whether it has been formally branded "dishonest" by the court system. The challenge is not access; it is interpretation. The records are in Chinese, the terms look similar, and each one carries a different legal weight. Seeing 被执行人 on a profile is not the same as seeing 失信被执行人 — one means "under enforcement," the other means "blacklisted."
Three terms do most of the work. The sections below walk through each one with realistic scenarios, separate tolerable records from serious alarms, and show you where to run these checks yourself.
On a company profile in a database like Tianyancha, the first thing you will see under the 司法风险 (judicial risk) section is usually the 法律诉讼 list — the lawsuits the company has been a party to. Start reading with a simple distinction: is the company the plaintiff (原告) or the defendant (被告)?
Being a plaintiff is generally not a bad sign. It can indicate a company that takes its receivables and its business seriously. Being a defendant, on its own, does not decide anything either. A large share of commercial cases in China are 买卖合同纠纷 (sales contract disputes), and any actively trading company will pick up a few lawsuits over the years.
The real signal is in the pattern, not in any single case.
Repeated appearances as a defendant within the last two years — especially when the cases are all the same type, say contract breach after contract breach — deserves attention. So does the trajectory of the cases: disputes that move past the 开庭公告 (hearing announcement) stage into 裁判文书 (written judgment) and end in rulings against the company tell a different story than cases that were withdrawn or settled. Case amounts that are large relative to the company's registered capital matter too.
A concrete example. Say you are evaluating a packaging manufacturer in Ningbo: ten years old, active status, clean license. But its litigation list shows five separate sales contract disputes in the last eighteen months, and the company is the defendant in every one of them. This does not prove the company is a scam — but it does tell you this supplier routinely ends up in disputes with its own customers. That is exactly what you want to know before you wire a deposit, not after.
被执行人 translates roughly as "judgment debtor under enforcement." Technically it means this: there is a final court judgment (or arbitration award) against the party, the party has not complied with it, and an enforcement case has been opened. Enforcement files are handled by the people's courts (人民法院) and are searchable on the Supreme People's Court's official system, 中国执行信息公开网 (zxgk.court.gov.cn).
The critical point: for a company to appear as 被执行人, it must first lose a case and then fail to make the payment the court ordered. This record is one step beyond "we had a dispute." It means "the court ordered payment, and payment did not happen."
When reading these entries, weigh the date, the amount, and the case status together. A single closed enforcement file from five years ago does not carry the same weight as three files opened in the last six months. The 执行标的 (enforcement amount) shown per case tells its own story: a small, closed amount is one thing; an open case worth millions of yuan is another. And watch for the term 终本案件 — it means the case was provisionally closed because the court could not find any seizable assets. In plain terms: the court tried to collect, and there was nothing to collect from.
Picture this scenario. You are negotiating with an electronics components supplier in Guangdong, and they offer you a discount in exchange for a 50% upfront payment. The registry record is clean, but the enforcement search turns up two 被执行人 entries, one of them opened three months ago. That means the company's cash flow is being squeezed by court order, and the odds rise that your deposit will go toward old debts rather than your order. In that situation you either negotiate the deposit down or switch to a secured payment method such as a letter of credit — either way, you made the call with data instead of hope.
失信被执行人, known in English-language literature as the "dishonest judgment debtor" list, is a public blacklist administered by the Supreme People's Court. Getting onto this list requires more than an enforcement case: it takes behavior such as refusing to pay despite having the means, concealing assets, or actively obstructing the court's judgment.
The list has very concrete consequences inside China. Listed companies cannot bid on government tenders, cannot obtain credit, and are cut off from state support programs. More striking still, their legal representatives (法定代表人) are typically placed under 限制高消费 (restriction on high consumption): they cannot fly, cannot book first-class seats on high-speed trains, and cannot stay in luxury hotels.
For you, the meaning is straightforward: a company on the 失信被执行人 list has been stamped by China's own legal system as one that does not honor its obligations. When you see this record, the question is no longer "is this risky?" but "is there any sensible way to work with this company on prepayment terms at all?" If the record is old and the company has since been removed from the list — removals are also visible in the records — you can weigh that differently. But an active listing should, at minimum, make you rethink the payment structure from scratch.
One warning: also check the personal records of the legal representative. Sometimes the company looks clean while the legal representative's name is blacklisted through other companies. For example, a trading company registered in Yiwu in 2023 may show zero cases of its own — but search the legal representative's name and you find them on the blacklist because of a company dissolved two years earlier. The same person continuing business under a new company name is one of the most common patterns seen in the field.
Start with zxgk.court.gov.cn (中国执行信息公开网), the official source for 被执行人, 失信被执行人, and 限制高消费 queries. It is free, but the interface is in Chinese and you must enter the company name exactly, in Chinese characters. This is the place to go for the enforcement and blacklist records — the two heaviest signals.
For the underlying disputes, use wenshu.court.gov.cn (中国裁判文书网), the database of written court judgments. When you actually want to understand what a fight was about — what was delivered, what was claimed, who won — this is where you look.
For registration, business license, and administrative penalty records, the official source is gsxt.gov.cn (National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System). One caveat: judicial records do not appear here, so on its own it is not enough.
Finally, Tianyancha consolidates all of the above into a single company profile. If you do not read Chinese or do not want to comb through each source separately, this is the practical route; for example, you can search by company name or USCC on China Trade Intel and receive the litigation and enforcement records as a report in English.
A sensible working order: verify the registry status and license first, then review the litigation list, then run the enforcement and blacklist queries on zxgk. License checks protect you from fake companies; judicial record checks protect you from real but troubled ones.
If a company has a few lawsuits, should I walk away immediately?
No. It is normal for actively trading companies to get involved in litigation. Look at whether the company is plaintiff or defendant, the case type, the frequency, and the outcomes. A single old dispute and systematic defendant behavior are not the same thing.
Can you never do business with a company that has a 被执行人 record?
There is no absolute rule, but the record means the company failed to comply with a court order. If you proceed, consider payment methods without prepayment or with security — a letter of credit or escrow — and check whether the record is current.
How up to date are these records?
Enforcement and blacklist records on zxgk.court.gov.cn are updated as courts process them; a newly opened case can take days to appear. So a "not found in records" result is not a guarantee that no problem exists — for large orders, protect yourself through the payment structure as well.