Why the registry misleads. China's national enterprise credit registry keeps printing 在营（开业） — “in operation” — after insolvency proceedings have closed, because closing a case does not reset an administrative status flag. Both worked cases on this page passed a registry-only screen long after a court should have stopped them: one had been declared bankrupt for over two years, the other had equipment in judicial auction while its English export site kept answering quotes.
What this page is. The four records that do answer the question, what each one can and cannot tell you, a fifteen-minute sequence in order, and both cases from this directory with their numbers — the Shenbei Circuit record (bankruptcy declared, plant leased out) and the Guangtian (Wesky) record (enforcement wave, auction, a second entity at the same address).
What it is not. It is not a legal opinion and not a substitute for credit insurance or a site visit — see the audit checklist for the visit. Every number here cites a court ruling, a tax-authority reply, a provincial inspection notice or a registry entry on the two linked records.
| Record | It answers | It does not answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Annual report in the national enterprise credit registry | Insured headcount for each filing year, registered versus paid-in capital, shareholder and legal-representative changes. A headcount falling by more than a third between filings is a question worth asking; a capital increase paid in full during a crisis year tells you who is funding the entity. | Whether the line is running. The status flag is administrative, not operational. |
| 2 · Court enforcement records (被执行人 / 失信被执行人 listings, aggregated dockets) | Whether the legal entity pays judgments. Volume by cause (sales-contract disputes dominate a failing factory), restriction-on-consumption orders, cases terminated for want of discoverable assets, tax-arrears notices. | Output. A solvent plant can have old, small, settled cases; a dying one can still ship while the queue forms. |
| 3 · Insolvency notices (national enterprise bankruptcy information network) | The decisive sequence: petition accepted, administrator appointed, bankruptcy declared, proceedings closed, distribution reports. Administrator accounts show what is left and whether the plant has been leased out. | Who operates the site afterwards. A successor entity may trade from the same address under a new USCC. |
| 4 · Environmental and administrative penalties (provincial ecology bureaus, inspection notices) | Operational-licence risk that survives solvency — discharge findings, hazardous-waste violations, permit problems. These land on the plant that ships your boards regardless of who owns it. | Solvency. The worst environmental finding in this cluster sat inside a company that was, at the time, still paying its debts. |
A fifth check is free and takes one minute: does the domain still resolve? A domain that answers mail (an MX record) but has no web host (no A record) is the signature of an office that lingers after production stops — that exact pattern is documented in two records in this directory — and once without any insolvency at all: Zhichao Technology in Suining is a producing, 1,267-insured PCB plant whose only domain has no A record and survives as mail. There the check is a prompt to ask, not a verdict.
SITE CHECK — is this factory still producing? (15 minutes)
1. Registry, annual report: insured headcount for the last three
filings. Note the trend, not the latest figure alone.
2. Registry: registered vs paid-in capital; any change of
shareholder or legal representative inside the last 24 months.
3. Courts: search the exact legal name (characters, not pinyin).
Count enforcement cases and dishonest-debtor listings; write
down the date of the most recent one.
4. Courts: if equipment or real property appears in a judicial
auction, treat any deposit as unsecured and stop there.
5. Insolvency network: search for acceptance, declaration and
closure notices naming the company.
6. Domain: does the website resolve? Does the domain answer
mail only (MX record present, no A record)?
7. Weigh: production evidence (live site, customs records,
current hiring) against insolvency evidence (enforcement,
auction, notices). If the picture is one-sided, ask in
writing which USCC goes on the contract — then verify it.
Step 7 is the one that matters when the evidence conflicts, and the two cases below are the two directions it can conflict in: a dead company that still exists on paper, and a live website in front of a failing balance sheet.
Full source-linked record: the Shenbei Circuit status page. The company is excluded from this directory's supplier list; the record stays public so the shortlist stays honest.
A buyer who places a deposit with this entity is an unsecured creditor behind a tax claim, a secured lender and at least six judgment creditors. Full record: the Guangtian status page, including the six questions to put in writing before sending money.
The two failure modes, in one line each. A registry-only screen passes a bankrupt factory (case 1). A website-only screen passes an auctioned one (case 2). The four records exist because each one catches what the other three miss.
Enforcement is not a shutdown order — plants ship through enforcement waves, and some of them survive. Insolvency can end in restructuring rather than closure; a reopened plant under a new entity is a different counterparty with a different USCC, and this directory updates its records when that happens, dated. Aggregated court databases under-count as well as over-count, which is why every number on the two case pages carries its docket or ruling number. And none of it replaces asking the factory directly which legal entity signs the contract — in writing, with the USCC, checked against the registry. That question costs nothing and is answered honestly far more often than buyers expect.
Where this sits in the buyer's sequence: FX and payment terms (what to fix before any deposit moves) · verify a Chinese PCB supplier in 20 minutes (six checks in timed order, this is the risk screen inside it) · the factory audit checklist (what a site visit adds that records cannot) · the Suining cluster, measured (the directory these two cases come from) · About & methodology (how screening-out works, and how to contest a record).