A UK litigator recently asked us to review a due diligence report her client had paid four figures for. It was sixty pages long. Stripped of the cover art and the boilerplate on "Chinese business culture", there were two pages of substance: a screenshot from a well-known Chinese company-information aggregator, machine-translated, with the directors' names misspelt.
That is the market. Most reports sold into the UK as "China due diligence" are aggregator scrapes dressed up as intelligence. They are fine for a first sniff test. They are not fine when a Commercial Court judge, an arbitrator, or your own risk committee is going to ask where the underlying record came from, who pulled it, and on what date.
This piece sets out what an evidence-grade report actually contains — the kind you can attach to a witness statement, hand to counsel before a freezing-order application, or rely on when pricing a deal.
Start with the registry, not the aggregator
The foundation of any credible China due diligence exercise is a fresh pull from the official State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) registry — known in practice through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System — and, where relevant, the equivalent provincial AMR portal for the counterparty's place of registration.
Aggregator sites (the ones whose logos you have probably seen) repackage this data with a delay and with editorial choices baked in. For evidence, you want the underlying record, captured on a defined date, with the URL, the query parameters and a clean PDF or screen capture in the bundle.
A proper registry search confirms:
- Legal name in Chinese characters, unified social credit code, and registered address
- Registered capital, paid-in capital, and the gap between them
- Legal representative, directors, supervisors and senior management
- Shareholders and the chain of ownership up to the ultimate beneficial owner where visible
- Business scope, registration status (active, abnormal operation, revoked, deregistered)
- Branches, equity pledges, and chattel mortgages registered against the entity
- Administrative penalties published by the regulator
Two details matter. First, "abnormal operation" status is a quiet red flag that aggregator summaries often soften. Second, the gap between registered and paid-in capital tells you something real about shareholder exposure under PRC company law if the company later cannot pay its debts.
PRC court searches: what is actually retrievable
This is where most reports collapse. UK readers are used to a relatively unified search of English court records. The PRC equivalent is fragmented across several official platforms operated by the Supreme People's Court and lower courts, each covering a different slice: case filings, judgments and rulings, enforcement cases, dishonest judgment debtors, and restrictions on high-spending.
A credible PRC court search section should distinguish, by name, between:
- Case acceptance and filing records — whether the counterparty has been sued or has sued others, by court and case number
- Judgments and rulings — the substantive decisions published, with date, court, cause of action and outcome
- Enforcement cases — where a winning party has applied to enforce a judgment, arbitral award or notarised debt instrument
- Dishonest judgment debtor listings — the public "untrustworthy persons subject to enforcement" register
- Consumption restriction orders — limits on travel, hotels and other discretionary spending imposed on individuals connected to unpaid judgments
- Bankruptcy and reorganisation filings — published through the dedicated SPC bankruptcy portal
Each of these lives on a different official source. A report that simply says "no litigation found" without naming the platforms searched, the search strings used, and the date of capture is not evidence — it is a vibe. Worse, judgment publication in China is selective: not every judgment is uploaded, and some are withdrawn. A careful report will say so, rather than imply the absence of a hit equals a clean record.
For cross-border litigation purposes — say, you are weighing whether to sue in London or Shanghai, or whether to seek recognition of an English judgment in China under the 2022 judicial guidance on foreign judgments — the enforcement and dishonest debtor data is often more useful than the judgment text itself. It tells you whether this counterparty pays when ordered to.
Reading the enforcement signals
A counterparty that has been sued is not necessarily a bad counterparty. A counterparty that has been sued, lost, and then forced the claimant into enforcement proceedings is a different animal. The pattern worth flagging in any report:
- Multiple enforcement cases across different courts in a short window
- Enforcement applications that close with a finding of "no property available for enforcement" — the PRC equivalent of a stone the bailiff cannot squeeze
- Repeated entries on the dishonest debtor list, particularly against the legal representative personally
- Consumption restrictions still in force against directors or shareholders
- Equity freezes registered at the AMR against the counterparty's shares in its subsidiaries
These signals matter at deal stage because they predict behaviour. They matter at litigation stage because they shape whether a judgment or award against this entity is worth the paper. An evidence-grade report should not just list the cases — it should tell you what the pattern means for recoverability.
Asset visibility: what you can and cannot see
UK counsel often arrive expecting something like a Land Registry search plus a Companies House charges register. The PRC reality is partial.
What is reasonably visible through official sources:
- Real property held in the company's name, via targeted searches at local real estate registration centres (usually requiring a Chinese lawyer and a legitimate purpose)
- Registered trade marks, patents and copyrights through the CNIPA and Copyright Protection Centre
- Equity holdings in other PRC companies, traceable through the AMR registry
- Vehicles and certain chattels where mortgages are registered
- Listed-company shareholdings through stock exchange disclosures
What is not openly visible: bank account balances, most movables, offshore holdings, and personal assets of shareholders absent a court order. Anyone promising you a Chinese counterparty's bank statements as part of a commercial due diligence package is either misrepresenting the law or breaking it. The same applies to personal credit data.
A useful report tells you what was looked for, what was found, and — crucially — what is legally unobtainable without a court process. That candour is what makes the document usable in front of a tribunal.
When the report needs to be evidence, not background
If the report may end up in a bundle, three things should be true from the first page:
- Every official source is named, with the URL, the search terms, the result, and the date and time of capture
- Original-language captures are preserved alongside certified English translations, not replaced by them
- The searcher is identifiable — a named PRC-qualified lawyer or licensed investigator, not an anonymous "research team"
These are unglamorous requirements. They are also the difference between a document your opponent's counsel ignores and one they have to engage with.
For UK teams running this work into a Letter Before Action, a freezing-order application, or a deal IC paper, Serene Jade's China due diligence service is built to this standard, with PRC-qualified lawyers available through our Chinese Lawyer app for the legal-opinion layer that sits on top.
FAQ
Q: If a judgment doesn't appear on the SPC's published judgments site, does that mean it doesn't exist? A: No. Publication is selective and some judgments are withdrawn or never uploaded, particularly in sensitive matters or where parties have applied to seal. A thorough search cross-references the judgments database with the case filing, enforcement and dishonest debtor platforms, and flags the gap rather than treating absence as proof.
Q: Can a China due diligence report support a without-notice freezing injunction in the English courts? A: It can form part of the evidence base, provided each finding is sourced to an official record with a captured date and an identified searcher, and provided the report distinguishes confirmed facts from inference. Your counsel will still need a witness statement exhibiting the underlying captures — a glossy PDF on its own will not discharge the duty of full and frank disclosure.
Q: How current does a registry pull need to be before a signing or a hearing? A: As a working rule, refresh within the seven days before a deal signing or a hearing. PRC registry data changes faster than UK counterparties expect — directors, registered capital and equity pledges can shift in a week — and a stale pull is the easiest point for the other side to attack.
For corridor work that needs to stand up to scrutiny on both sides, Serene Jade's China due diligence service is available through the link above.