They have your money and have gone quiet. The record cannot get it back, but it can tell you whether chasing them is worth funding.

1. The question that changes what your next spend is worth

The instinct after a supplier goes quiet is to escalate: a lawyer’s letter, a collection agent, a court filing. Each of those has a price, and each assumes the same unstated thing. That there is something at the other end worth reaching.

One number is worth knowing before you rely on an English name. When I searched all 106 Chinese manufacturers on a US regulator's list by their English names, 42.5% returned nothing at all. The full search-outcome study shows what came back and why.

Recovery starts with naming the entity, and that is where many cases stall. Across this frame 45 of 106 searches returned no candidate at all. For companies a regulator had already listed. If the counterparty could not be resolved before the transfer, it will be harder after it.

Chinese public records answer that assumption directly, through one entry type: terminated-enforcement cases. A terminated-enforcement case means a court already ruled against this company, tried to collect, and closed the case without recovering the money. Someone before you won, and still got nothing.

That is not a prediction about your case. It is a dated fact about theirs, and it belongs in front of the decision rather than after it.

The same records also answer the prior question: is there still a legal entity here at all? A company can be revoked (吊销) and still hold a normal-looking licence copy, and the entity you contracted with may not be the entity whose account you paid. Both are read from the same registration record.

2. Start here, free: is there still an entity to pursue?

Before you read your own result, know what a normal one looks like. I ran six public risk signals across 46 ordinary Chinese manufacturers on 28 August 2026: 8.7% were already subject to enforcement and 2.2% were on the dishonest-judgment-debtor list. Those are the cases where a court has already tried and the record shows how it went, and where your own attempt is likely to join a queue. Six risk signals measured across 46 manufacturers →

Before any of the paid checks, and before any lawyer’s retainer, the first fact is whether the company you contracted with is still on the register at all. That lookup is free on this page. Nothing is stored against you, no account is created, and the result carries the time it was read.

Supplier’s registered Chinese name

Read the registry record

Use the registered name from the business licence or the contract, a storefront name, an English trading name or a brand will not resolve. We match the exact registered name and reject near matches, because the upstream data source returns the closest company it can find rather than nothing. A near match here means someone else’s records under your supplier’s name.

Have a photo of the business licence they sent you? Both things printed on it are usable right now. Copy the registered Chinese name into the search above. Run the 18-character code through the free structure check. A code that fails its own check digit means the licence copy was mistranscribed or altered. That is an answer in itself. Only have an English trading name? Search candidate registered names, free.

3. The five records that answer “is this worth chasing”

Each entry below carries its own limit. We publish the limit next to the value because a record that is read without its limit is worse than no record. It produces confidence the filing never supported.

• Terminated-current-enforcement-procedure records: Debts a court ordered and pursued, where the current procedure was closed because no executable assets were found at that stage. Enforcement may resume if assets are later found. The record states the enforcement outcome and never the company's present solvency. Limit: Only debts someone already sued over — quiet insolvency with no creditor in court leaves no entry.
• Dishonest debtor and enforcement records: Payment-safety red lines before any deposit. Limit: A clean record is not payment safety — this records disputes that already reached a court or regulator, and a first default has not reached one yet.
• Bankruptcy and restructuring filings: The clearest end-of-road signal a registry can give. Limit: No filing does not mean solvent — a company can be abandoned without anyone filing to wind it up.
• Business abnormalities and administrative penalties: Operating stability over time. Limit: Records what regulators flagged and when — a company can be failing for months before anything appears here.
• High-consumption restriction orders: Personal spending bans on the company or its legal representative. Limit: Absence means no active order on file — it does not clear the person or the company financially.

These five are sold as one pack on the published menu, where every line shows its own price and the official system the record originates in. The registration snapshot, whether the entity exists, its status, scope and address, is free, and on its own it settles a surprising number of these cases.

4. How often anyone actually reaches the enforcement record

The records above are worth pulling. It is also worth knowing how rarely they contain anything, because that shapes whether pursuit is realistic before you spend on it.

On 21–22 August 2026 I queried the enforcement-adjacent dimensions across 45 Chinese manufacturers. Every company on the NHTSA vehicle-manufacturer list resolving to exactly one Chinese entity. This is an ordinary group of exporters. Nobody had accused any of them of anything.

Three companies in 45 show a current judicial-assistance record. That is the record type that means someone got a court to act: equity frozen or executed against. It is the closest thing in the public record to evidence that pursuit worked for somebody, and it appears for roughly one company in fifteen.

Two more carry only a historical entry. Run a current-status check on those two and you get a clean screen. The earlier matter is not shown. So an empty judicial record tells you the supplier is not currently subject to enforcement, and nothing at all about whether it has been before.

None of this predicts your own recovery, and we would rather say that plainly than let a rate look like a forecast. What it does support is a sequencing decision. Pull the free records first. Let what they show, or fail to show, set the budget for anything that follows. The same 45 companies appear throughout this site: one batch that I keep asking different questions. The batch itself is described in the NHTSA manufacturer study.

5. What no record can do

Stating this plainly is the point of the page. It is no disclaimer tucked at the bottom.

• It cannot recover money. We read records. We do not negotiate, collect, litigate, or contact your supplier on your behalf.
• It cannot prove intent. Nothing in a registry distinguishes a fraud from a factory that took the deposit and then failed. The consequence for you may be identical. The record does not label which it was.
• A clean record is not good news yet. Every one of the five limits above says a version of the same thing: absence of an entry means absence of a filing. A company can be days from collapse with nothing on file.
• It is dated, and it stops being current immediately. A record read today describes today. That is why every line we deliver names its source and the date it was read.

6. What to do with the answer

There are only three shapes the answer takes, and each points somewhere different.

• No such entity, or the entity you paid is not the entity you contracted with. The counterparty question comes before the recovery question. If the account name never matched the registered seller, that is the fact your bank, your payment provider and any lawyer will ask for first. See the bank account check and the payment-entity match.
• The entity exists and its record is clean. You have a counterparty that can be addressed. The usual escalation path has something to aim at: formal notice, a Chinese lawyer’s letter, platform complaint, arbitration or litigation. We do not provide any of those; a lawyer qualified in Chinese law does.
• The entity exists and is already carrying terminated enforcement, dishonest-debtor listings or a bankruptcy filing. Then the honest reading is that others reached the same finish line before you and came away empty. That does not make action pointless. It makes the cost of action a decision you are now making with the relevant fact in hand rather than without it.

If you want that answer with the sources and dates attached in a form you can forward, send one supplier name. Person names are withheld by default; unlocking named individuals is a separate, explicit step, because a routine check should not quietly become a file on people.

7. Outside our scope, but start these today, not after the record answer

None of these involve Currawong. This is general information and no substitute for legal advice. All three tend to be time-sensitive, and none of them needs the registry answer first.

• Your own bank. Ask whether a recall or trace can still be raised on the transfer. Windows vary by bank and rail, and they close, a call that turns out to be too late costs nothing, the reverse can.
• Your country’s official reporting channel. Most jurisdictions run a consumer-protection or economic-crime reporting service. A filed report creates a dated record of the loss, some recovery and insurance routes later ask for exactly that.
• The platform, if you ordered through one. Marketplace dispute windows are counted from the promised delivery date. They do not start when you gave up waiting. On Alibaba.com, Trade Assurance gives you 30 days from delivery, 60 for Enterprise buyers. Asking “can I get my deposit refunded on Alibaba?” — the honest answer, with the four gaps that defeat claims, is here.

Keep the transfer receipt, the payment instruction, the chat history and the licence copy together. Every route above, and any lawyer later, starts by asking for the same folder.

Boundaries and sources

This page is general information about what public records contain. It is not legal advice, it is not a recovery service, and it does not assess the merits of any dispute. Records reach us through a licensed commercial data platform. It republishes filings originating in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统), China Judgements Online (中国裁判文书网) and the China Enforcement Information Disclosure Network (中国执行信息公开网). We do not query, proxy or scrape those portals from your browser, and we do not work around access controls on them. More on how we handle evidence: the desk and its boundaries.