By China Agent Ltd
Most people think verifying a supplier in China is about checking websites, licenses, and Alibaba profiles.
It’s not.
Factories that don’t exist pass online checks every day.
Trading companies pretend to be manufacturers.
Scammers rent offices for one afternoon to take staged photos.
If you rely on Google’s verification steps, you’re walking into China with your guard down.
Let’s go through what actually works — the method buyers inside China use, not the method written on Western blogs.
Online checks are a filter. Not protection.
They eliminate the clowns, not the professionals.
A real scammer can pass:
They know what you expect to see.
They’ve seen a hundred buyers before you.
Online verification gives you confidence.
But confidence without evidence is how people lose deposits.
So treat online checks as Stage Zero — necessary, but useless alone.
Foreign buyers love business licenses.
Chinese suppliers know that.
Here’s the truth:
Every scammer in China has a perfect business license.
Why?
Because anyone can legally register a trading company, print a certificate, and open a bank account.
A business license does NOT tell you:
It only tells you that a company exists on paper.
You’re not buying paper.
You’re buying reality.
You can’t verify a Chinese supplier without identifying the kind of company they really are:
Real factory. Real production lines. Real capacity.
This is who you want — if they actually exist.
They send you someone else’s photos.
They mark up prices.
When things go wrong, they vanish.
They don’t produce anything.
They exist only to collect deposits.
The problem?
All three show similar online footprints.
Only on-ground verification separates them.
Everything up to this point is digital.
Digital is easy to fake.
Nothing replaces someone standing at the gate of the factory, talking to real humans, taking real photos, and confirming the business license matches the building’s wall.
Real verification has four parts:
If ownership doesn’t match what you were told — stop.
This is the part Google never mentions.
You need to confirm:
If there’s no noise, no smell, no workers — it’s not a factory.
A real factory can always show:
A fake supplier sends excuses.
The final piece — and the one 95% of buyers skip.
You must confirm:
If they refuse this, they’re telling you the truth:
They can’t be trusted.
Most do remote checks.
They email the factory.
They ask for photos.
They check databases.
That’s not verification.
That’s copy-paste.
You cannot verify a factory from 7,000 miles away.
And you definitely cannot verify a factory by asking the factory for the evidence.
It’s like asking a student to grade their own test.
Here’s how verification works when it’s done properly — inside China.
We confirm legal status, ownership, tax status, litigation, and credit.
Our team shows up unannounced.
We walk the floor.
We check machines.
We check output.
We check workers.
We confirm the real address.
Photos + videos with time, date, and GPS metadata.
No staged tours.
No stock images.
No “trust me.”
We sit with the legal representative.
We confirm willingness to sign a Chinese-law contract.
This reveals who they are instantly.
If the factory passes verification, we translate all commitments into an enforceable, Chinese-law contract with penalties tied to delivery and quality.
No payment until you have photos, QC evidence, and physical confirmation.
This is the only method that works consistently.
Verification isn’t about trust.
It’s about control.
When you verify a supplier, you get:
Most buyers lose money in China because they hand over money before they have control.
Verification is the tool that gives it back.
If your verification is online, you don’t have verification.
You have hope.
Real verification is done on the ground, in China, by someone who speaks the language, understands the culture, and is willing to sit across from the boss and get the truth.
That’s what China Agent does.
That’s what protects your money, your product, and your business.