Pull the registry file
China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统) holds the authoritative registration record: legal representative, registered capital (and, critically, paid-in status), shareholders, registered address, business scope, and the company’s annual reports. An entity with large registered capital but zero paid-in capital, or one that changed its legal representative last month, tells you a great deal about what you are chasing.
Check the litigation and enforcement records
China Judgments Online and the enforcement information system reveal whether your debtor is a serial defendant, whether prior judgments against it remain unsatisfied (终本案件 — cases closed for lack of assets), and whether it or its legal representative sits on the judgment-defaulter blacklist (失信被执行人名单). A debtor already on the blacklist with three unsatisfied judgments is a very different recovery proposition from a first-time defaulter with a factory.
- Registry: paid-in capital, legal representative changes, address history, annual reports.
- Litigation: pending and concluded cases, plaintiff or defendant, amounts.
- Enforcement: unsatisfied judgments and blacklist status — the strongest solvency signal available.
- Equity pledges and chattel mortgages: assets already encumbered to someone else.
- Customs and trade activity: an "empty" company that ships forty containers a month is not empty.
Follow the people, not just the entity
The shell game works by abandoning entities, not businesses. The same shareholders and managers typically reappear behind a new company at a new address doing the same trade. Mapping the shareholder and legal-representative network — who else they control, where those entities operate — often reveals both the real business and pressure points, including potential claims against related parties where the law permits.
What the protocol tells you
The output is not a yes/no; it is a route. A solvent first-time defaulter: demand and negotiate. A solvent staller hiding behind a dispute: escalate to on-site negotiation. A shell with a live successor entity: investigate the network for leverage and related-party angles. A genuinely empty company with no assets and no successors: write it off and save the fees. Every one of those outcomes is cheaper to reach in the registry than anywhere else — which is why our OP-01 dossier is this protocol, professionalised and written down.