China Search Tips
Sayari Graph contains a wealth of Chinese public records, ranging from the country’s central corporate registry, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (NECIPS), to central government procurement databases and foreign investment databases from the Ministry of Commerce.Unlike Chinese registries, Sayari Graph allows users to quickly identify state ownership and search in languages other than Chinese.
This guide seeks to provide users with search tips to leverage Chinese records within the platform.
Using USCCs and names to identify Chinese companies
To identify a company of interest in Sayari Graph, it is best to search with a unique identifier, if possible. The strongest unique identifier for Chinese entities is the Uniform Social Credit Code (USCC). USCCs are unique to every legal entity in China.
The second strongest unique identifier for Chinese entities is their Chinese name. According to Chinese law, all legal entities must register a unique company name. Most company names follow a specific format. Searching Graph by a company’s legal Chinese name will often yield more precise results than searching by its English name.
Searching with English company names
Unlike native Chinese registries, you can search for Chinese companies in Graph using their English names. However, you might not get the right hits in the platform when searching with a company’s English trade name, because not all companies register all of their English trade names in official registries. You may have to try spelling variations of the trade name, or try to search by the English translation of their Chinese name.
Identifying state ownership through the Explore tool
You can use the “Explore” tool to quickly identify state ownership or control in an entity’s ownership structure. On an entity’s dossier, navigate to Explore > Beneficial Ownership. In the “Related Entity Name” box, you can enter the names of government bodies and use the in-app translation tool to search for them in Simplified Chinese. Examples of terms include:
- State Council (Simplified Chinese: 国务院)
- State-owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (国有资产监督管理委员会) or simply Commission (委员会)
- Ministry of Finance (财政部)
- Government (政府)
- Corps (e.g. Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) (兵团)
Figure 1: Example of using the translate function to search for State Council ownership in the Explore tool.