If you only have the English name of a Chinese company, it is difficult for you to file a complaint or lawsuit against it. However, if this English name comes from the Chinese company’s bank account in China, it is OK.
This post was first published in CJO GLOBAL, which is committed to providing consulting services in China-related cross-border trade risk management and debt collection. We will explain how debt collection works in China below.
Because based on the English name, we can find this Chinese company’s legal name in Chinese, which is crucial to file a complaint or lawsuit.
1. Why do you need the Chinese name of a Chinese company?
You need to know whom you can sue and then identify its legal name in Chinese.
In case of a breach of contract, you can sue the breaching party. In case of a product quality dispute, you can sue the seller or the manufacturer. In case of an intellectual property infringement, you can sue the one who pirated your works.
However, if you want to sue the Chinese party, you need to know its legal name in Chinese.
You may see the name of a Chinese enterprise on the contract or the name of a Chinese manufacturer on the package. But these names are likely to be in English or other languages, rather than in Chinese.
All Chinese individuals and enterprises have their legal names in Chinese, and they have no legal or standard names in foreign languages.
In other words, their English names or names in other languages are named by themselves randomly. Usually, it’s hard to back-translate their weird foreign names to their legal Chinese names.
If you don’t know their legal names in Chinese, then you won’t be able to tell the Chinese court whom you are suing. Therefore, Chinese courts will not accept your case.
2. How could you obtain a China company’s legal name in Chinese?
i. You can ask a China company to provide its business license.
There are a legal name in Chinese and a unified credit code in its business license.
ii. You can ask a Chinese company to seal the contract with you.
To make a contract valid in China, Chinese companies must seal it. The official seal contains a legal name in Chinese and a unified credit code of the company.
You can check whether your company’s legal name in Chinese on the business license is consistent with that on the official seal. Because a scammer may get a scanned version of the business license of another company, although it is difficult for him to get another company’s seal.
What should you do if none of these methods works for you?
If you have paid to its bank account within China, it will be easy.
3. How to make use of the English name of a Chinese company’s bank account in China?
Based on this English name, we can help you find this Chinese company’s legal name in Chinese.
First, if this company is engaged in import and export business, the English name it uses in Chinese banks is usually the same as the English name it uses in the Ministry of Commerce and the customs of China.
Therefore, we can use this English name to find its Chinese name in the Ministry of Commerce and the Customs.
Second, in case of litigation, we can request the court to go to the bank to investigate its true identity.
Banks located in China are obligated to cooperate with the court’s investigation into the litigation. Hence, the court is in a position to help us identify whether the owner of the bank account is this company.
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Photo by Marko Sun on Unsplash
Contributors: Meng Yu 余萌
