Company name check is very important when you set up a business in China. If you’re sourcing from China or doing business with a Chinese company, in most cases you’re likely dealing with a domestic Chinese company. Nearly all Chinese company names follow standard patterns and by just reading a company's name. Generally, there are five key features about a company name in China.
I. China Company’s Name Structure
Before getting too concerned about the Chinese characters in a China company’s name, you can actually tell whether or not they are foreign-owned just by looking at the structure of their name.
Chinese company name structure:
Registered location + Chosen name + What the company does + Company type
Foreign-owned company name form:
Chosen name + (Registered location) + What the company does + Company type
As you can see above, foreign-owned Chinese company names include the registered location in brackets after their chosen name.
II. China Company’s Registered Location
The first part of a domestic China company name is its registered location. Chinese company names include the location where the company is registered. Companies in Mainland China are registered by a branch of the AIC and this registration may be at the local, city, provincial or state level.
As a general rule, Chinese location names come in groups of three characters: the actual name of the location tends to be two characters, and this is usually followed by a third character indicating what kind of location it is.
III. China Company's Chosen Name
The chosen name of the company makes it stand out from the crowd. It is often used for the company’s branding and is typically 2 to 4 characters long. The reasons why companies in China decide upon their “chosen name” can be very diverse and often reflects the character or goals of their owners. Certain characters crop up quite often in this kind of name. They may be intended to make a company name sound more modern or impressive. There’s also something of a trend for names that don’t mean anything in particular but sound like transcriptions of foreign company names.
IV. China Company's Business Scope
After the ‘chosen name’, a China company name will usually include a very brief and general description of what the company actually does or the field it works in. Examples in English might be ‘automobile parts’, ‘safety products’ or ‘business consulting’.
V. China Company's Type
Finally, at the end of Chinese company names comes the company type. This is consistent with most parts of the world, e.g. many US company names end in “Inc.” or “LLC” and many UK company names in “Ltd.”
In China the majority of companies you are likely to encounter are limited liability companies which is formally written as “有限责任公司”, but the official abbreviation “有限公司” is more commonly used.
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If you have further inquires, please do not hesitate to contact Tannet at anytime, anywhere by simply visiting Tannet’s website english.tannet-group.com, or calling Hong Kong hotline at 852-27826888 or China hotline at 86-755-82143422, or emailing to tannet-solution@hotmail.com. You are also welcome to visit our office situated in 16/F, Taiyangdao Bldg 2020,Dongmen Rd South, Luohu , Shenzhen, China.
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