Aug 15, 2026

USCI Number Explained: China's 18-Digit Business ID and How ChineseVerify Works

1. The Number on the License Nobody Explains

Your supplier sends over a business license. It is a colorful PDF with a red stamp and a wall of Chinese text. Somewhere near the top there is an 18-character string — digits and letters, something like 91110105MA01ABCD3X. You stare at it. You have no idea what it means. You are not even sure it is real.

That string is the USCI — the Unified Social Credit Identifier. And it is the single most important number on the entire document.

Every legally registered company in China has one. It shows up on the business license, doubles as the tax number, and replaces the old organization code. It is also the key that unlocks every government record attached to that company. Do business with a Chinese company without checking its USCI and you are flying blind.

This is worth getting right. Most buyers never look past the red stamp on the license. The ones who do — and who know what the digits mean — catch problems before they wire money.

2. What Is a USCI Number?

The USCI — full name Unified Social Credit Code (统一社会信用代码), sometimes written as USCC — is China’s national business identifier. It is 18 characters long, mixing digits and uppercase letters.

Think of it as China’s equivalent of a Companies House number in the UK, an EIN in the US, or a CNPJ in Brazil. The difference is that in China, this one number replaces what used to be three separate systems.

Before October 2015, a Chinese company needed three different numbers:

A business registration number (15 digits) from the AIC — the old industry and commerce regulator
An organization code (9 digits) from the quality inspection authority
A tax registration number from the tax bureau

Then the State Council rolled out the “Three Certificates in One” reform. Every new registration got a single 18-character USCI, and existing companies had until the end of 2017 to convert. Today, the USCI is the only identifier that matters. It serves as the business registration number, the organization code, and the tax number — all at once.

Four things to know before we go further:

It never changes. Once assigned, a USCI stays the same even if the company renames, restructures, or moves.
It is unique. No two entities share a code.
It covers everything. Companies, sole proprietorships, farmer cooperatives, NGOs, social groups, even government bodies — all get USCIs.
The letters I, O, Z, S, V are banned. They look too much like digits or each other. See one in a USCI and the code is invalid.

3. Anatomy of an 18-Digit USCI

A USCI is not random. Every position means something. Here is one, broken into its parts:

9 1 110105 MA01ABCD 3 X

What each segment tells you:

Position	Length	Segment	What It Means
1	1 char	Registration authority	Which government agency registered the entity. `9` = SAMR (State Administration for Market Regulation), the business registry. Other digits point to civil affairs, institutional reform commissions, and other agencies.
2	1 char	Entity type	What kind of organization it is. `1` = enterprise, `2` = individual business, `3` = farmer cooperative, `5` = social group / NGO, `9` = government institution.
3–8	6 chars	Administrative division	The province, city, and district where the entity is registered. `110105` = Beijing, Chaoyang District. `310115` = Shanghai, Pudong. This is the same coding system used on Chinese ID cards.
9–17	9 chars	Organization code	The unique serial number assigned by the registering authority. For companies registered before 2015, this is usually their old 9-digit organization code embedded directly into the USCI.
18	1 char	Check digit	A mathematical checksum calculated from the first 17 characters, using the MOD 31-2 algorithm defined in national standard GB 32100-2015. It catches typos and transcription errors.

Read the first eight characters and you already know who registered it, what kind of entity it is, and which district it sits in. Not bad for eight characters.

One thing about the check digit — it catches typos, it does not prove anything. A valid checksum means the 18 characters are internally consistent. It does not mean the company exists. You can generate a USCI with a perfect check digit that belongs to nobody. Always check it against the registry.

4. Old 15-Digit Number vs. New 18-Digit USCI

If you have been dealing with Chinese suppliers for a while, you may have seen a 15-digit number on older licenses. That was the old AIC business registration number — all digits, no letters, no embedded organization code.

It is obsolete.

The transition deadline was the end of 2017. Any company still operating under a 15-digit number in 2026 has either failed to complete the mandatory conversion, is showing an expired license, or the document is not what it claims to be. None of those are good signs.

For companies that existed before 2015, the USCI typically embeds their old 9-digit organization code in positions 9 through 17. This means legacy systems can cross-reference the old and new identifiers. But for any new verification, you want the 18-character USCI. If a supplier cannot or will not provide one, that is a red flag worth investigating.

5. How to Verify a USCI — The Hard Way

The official source for USCI verification is the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System — known in Chinese as GSXT (国家企业信用信息公示系统), run by SAMR. Every registered company’s data is in there. If a USCI is not in GSXT, the company does not legally exist.

Here is what trying to use GSXT from outside China actually looks like:

The entire site is in Chinese. No English toggle. No Google Translate integration that works reliably. The search fields, the navigation, the company profiles — every label is in Chinese. You might find the right company and still not know whether its status says “active” (存续) or “revoked” (吊销).

It barely loads overseas. GSXT runs on Chinese government servers. From most countries, pages take forever to load, searches time out, or the connection drops entirely. A VPN sometimes helps, sometimes makes it worse. It is not something you can rely on when you need an answer before a deposit deadline.

You need exact input. GSXT accepts only the full Chinese legal name or the complete 18-character USCI. No English trade names. No partial matches. Off by one character and you get nothing. Most overseas buyers only have an English trading name — useless in GSXT.

Chinese CAPTCHA. The site uses Chinese-character CAPTCHAs. If you cannot read Chinese, you cannot solve them. And from an overseas IP, even correct answers sometimes get rejected.

No exportable report. The best you can do is screenshot the page. There is no way to download a formatted report you can send to your compliance team, bank, or insurer.

If you speak Chinese, have a stable VPN, and have 20 minutes to spare, GSXT works. For everyone else, it is a wall.

6. How ChineseVerify Works

ChineseVerify exists because that wall is real. It does not make up data and it does not scrape random business directories. It queries the same official government databases behind GSXT — then gives you the result in a language you can read.

Here is how it actually works.

Step 1: Input and Format Validation

You enter a company name — Chinese or English — or paste a USCI.

Before anything hits a database, ChineseVerify checks the USCI format first: 18 characters, valid character set (no I, O, Z, S, V), and a correct check digit. Typos get caught instantly. If you typed 91110105MA01ABCD3Y and the check digit should be X, you find out immediately — no wasted lookup, no confusing “not found” screen.

If you search by name, ChineseVerify handles approximate matching and English-to-Chinese name resolution, so you do not need the exact legal name to find the right entity.

Step 2: Official Data Sources

ChineseVerify pulls directly from authoritative Chinese government registries:

SAMR registration database — company name, USCI, legal representative, registered address, establishment date, registered capital, business scope, operating status
NECIPS / GSXT — the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, for abnormal operations listings, administrative penalties, and annual reports
China Judgments Online — litigation records and court judgments
Supplementary sources for trademark, customs, and equity change data where available

This is the same data you would see on GSXT. The difference is infrastructure: ChineseVerify runs queries from inside China, so there are no CAPTCHA walls, no overseas timeout issues, no dropped connections.

Step 3: Translation and Structuring

Raw GSXT output is a wall of Chinese regulatory text. ChineseVerify maps each field to standard English business terms — human-curated field mapping, not Google Translate on a paragraph.

“存续” becomes “Active.” “吊销” becomes “Revoked.” “经营范围” becomes “Business Scope.” The business scope itself — often a dense paragraph of Chinese industrial classification terms — is translated into readable English with industry-specific terminology.

Risk signals are categorized and labeled: administrative penalties, abnormal operations listings, dishonest execution records (失信被执行人 — the Chinese “blacklist” for debtors who refuse court orders), and active litigation. You do not have to guess what a flag means.

Step 4: Report Delivery

The free preview shows the basics: company name, USCI, registration status, legal representative, and address. That is often enough to answer “does this company exist and is it active?”

The full report ($19, pay-per-check, no subscription required) adds:

Complete business scope translation
Registered capital vs. paid-in capital
Shareholder and equity structure
Risk flags and litigation history
Downloadable English PDF you can file with compliance or send to your bank

For teams verifying suppliers at scale, an API is available for batch lookups and integration into KYB onboarding flows.

A USCI is just a string until someone runs it against the registry and reads what comes back. ChineseVerify does both — under two minutes, in English, from anywhere.

7. What a USCI Check Actually Catches

Format validation is the easy part. What the registry actually tells you is where it gets interesting:

Fake companies. The USCI has a valid check digit but does not exist in SAMR’s database. The company was never registered. Stop.

Revoked or deregistered entities. The USCI exists, but the status is “Revoked” (吊销) or “Deregistered” (注销). The company is not legally operating. A supplier trading under a revoked license is breaking the law.

Entity mismatch. The USCI is registered to a company whose legal name does not match the name on your contract, invoice, or bank account. This often means you are dealing with a shell company or an impersonator.

Business scope mismatch. The registered business scope does not include manufacturing (生产/加工) or import/export (进出口). The supplier is a trading company posing as a factory, or they cannot legally export what they are selling you. Learn how to read a Chinese company’s business scope.

Capital red flags. Registered capital is declared at 10 million RMB but paid-in capital is zero. The company is underfunded and may lack the resources to fulfill your order.

Risk history. Active litigation, administrative penalties, or a dishonest-execution listing. None of these automatically disqualify a supplier, but you need to know about them before money leaves your account.

8. When to Run a USCI Check

New supplier, first order. Always. You have zero history with this company, and a two-minute check is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.

Before paying a deposit. Even if you verified last month. Registration status can change. A company that was active in June can be revoked in July.

Supplier changes bank details. If the account name suddenly differs from the registered legal name, find out why before you send money.

Annual re-verification. Re-check all active suppliers once or twice a year. A clean report last year does not mean a clean report today.

High-value orders. A $19 report against a $10,000 order is 0.19%. That is not a cost. It is a discount on risk.

Compliance onboarding. If your organization has KYB (Know Your Business) requirements for Chinese counterparties, a USCI check with a documented report is the standard starting point.

9. The Bottom Line

The USCI is not a random string. It is a structured identifier — every position encodes something: who registered it, what kind of entity it is, where it is based, and a unique serial. The check digit catches typos. But a valid format proves nothing on its own.

To know whether a Chinese company is real, active, and actually doing what it claims, you have to run that USCI against the official registry. GSXT has the data. For overseas buyers, it is also a Chinese-language, CAPTCHA-protected, intermittently-accessible wall.

ChineseVerify takes the wall down. Same official data. English interface. No VPN. No Chinese CAPTCHA. Two minutes and you know whether the company you are about to wire money to actually exists.

Verify a USCI number now →

FAQ

Can a USCI contain letters?

Yes. Positions 9 through 18 mix uppercase letters with digits. The letters I, O, Z, S, and V are excluded because they look too much like numbers or each other. Some USCIs are all digits, some are mixed — both are normal.

Is the USCI the same as the tax number?

Yes. Since the 2015 “Three Certificates in One” reform, the USCI is the business registration number, organization code, and tax number all rolled into one. If a Chinese company hands you a separate “tax number,” it should match their USCI. If it does not, ask why.

What if my supplier only gives me a 15-digit number?

Ask for the 18-digit USCI. The 15-digit format was retired at the end of 2017. A supplier who cannot produce a current USCI in 2026 is either showing an expired license, skipped the mandatory conversion, or the document is not legitimate. Any of those is a reason to pause.

Can I validate a USCI format myself?

You can check the length, the character set, and even compute the MOD 31-2 check digit yourself. But that only tells you the string is internally consistent. It will not tell you whether the company exists or is active. Only a registry lookup does that.

How is the USCI check digit calculated?

MOD 31-2, per national standard GB 32100-2015. Each of the first 17 characters gets a numeric value, is multiplied by a weight, and the results are summed. Take that sum modulo 31 and you get the check character. It is the same family as ISO 7064 checksums, adapted for a 31-character alphabet. You do not need to memorize this — ChineseVerify runs it automatically.

Does ChineseVerify store my search data?

The USCI and company name you enter are used only to query official databases and build your report. Search queries are not sold or shared. Full details are in the privacy policy on chineseverify.com.

How current is the data?

Near real time. SAMR and NECIPS are queried directly, so status changes, new penalties, and abnormal operations listings show up within days of being filed — not months.