Know a Company and Trade Safely

Do Chinese companies have official English names?

The answer to this question is no. The law explicitly stipulates that company names can only be in Chinese. According to the "Regulations on the Administration of Enterprise Name Registration," becoming effective on 1 March 2021:

• A company can only register one name. The name of the company should consist of two or more Chinese characters.
• The company name should be in Chinese characters. The name of companies in autonomous regions can also use ethnic languages.

Before 30 December 2022, the Ministry of Commerce required foreign trade operators to register, which included registering the company's English name, and the English company name would also appear on the registration certificate. However, starting from 20 December 2022, the requirement for foreign trade operators to register has been canceled. Therefore, in practice, companies usually use English names that correspond to their Chinese names on their own.

Therefore, only searches for registered Chinese names are supported in the official company registration database, i.e., the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. In other commercial data sources, the quality of searches using English names also varies.

There are some search tips that can improve the accuracy of retrieving the target company.

1. Use the company ID, i.e., the unified social credit code in the search, unless you don't have one. The Unified Social Credit Code is developed by the State Administration for Market Regulation and is used as a unique identification code for enterprises, organizations, and individual businesses. You can find the social credit code at the top-left side of the business license.

1. Use only the trade name, do not use the translated full name. For example, use "Guangdong Bowei" for "Guangdong Bowei Trading Co., Ltd.".
2. Use our FREE service, "Name Research," if you need any help identifying a company for a search. This service can be accessed through this link. Or, on the search results page, click the "Request a name search (free) "button (see the following image).

- End -