Unified Social Credit Code (USCC): China's 18-Character Company ID

Every Chinese company, since 2015, has been issued a single 18-character Unified Social Credit Code (统一社会信用代码), often abbreviated USCC or USCI (Unified Social Credit Identifier).

Think of the USCC as China's equivalent of:

• A Companies House Number (United Kingdom)
• An EIN (United States)
• A KvK Number (Netherlands)
• An OGRN (Russia)
• A CNPJ (Brazil)

It is the company's permanent, unique, government-issued ID. Unlike the English name, it cannot be duplicated. Unlike the Chinese name, it does not change when the company rebrands.

Anatomy of an 18-character USCC

The USCC is structured: it is not a random string. Each segment encodes information.

Position:  1   2   3-8         9-17                18
Field:     R   I   J           E                   C
           │   │   │           │                   │
           │   │   │           │                   └── Check digit
           │   │   │           └── Entity ID (9 chars)
           │   │   └── Jurisdiction code (6 digits — administrative region)
           │   └── Issuing organisation
           └── Registration management department

Position 1 indicates which government body manages the registration. The most common value is 9, indicating SAMR (the registration authority for ordinary companies).

Position 2 indicates the issuing authority's category (also typically 1 for SAMR-issued).

Positions 3–8 encode the administrative region using the same six-digit codes as Chinese national ID numbers. The first two digits identify the province, the next two identify the prefecture-level city, and the last two identify the county or district. For example, 440300 indicates Shenzhen.

Positions 9–17 are the unique entity sequence within that jurisdiction.

Position 18 is a check digit, mathematically derived from the preceding 17 characters. A USCC with a wrong check digit is, by definition, fake — but most foreign buyers don't have an easy way to validate this manually.

How to use the USCC for verification

Three practical use cases.

1. As the GSXT search input

If you have the USCC but not the Chinese name (which is the unusual case), GSXT does accept search by USCC. This is often the cleanest path because USCCs are unique while Chinese names occasionally have minor variants (companies sometimes register slight variations during name changes).

2. As the cross-check between documents

The USCC must match across:

• The Business License (top-left or top-centre of the document)
• The official corporate seal (round red stamp)
• The bank account information
• Any contract footer or letterhead
• Any pro forma invoice

If the same USCC appears on all four, the entity identity is consistent. If the USCC differs between any two, you are dealing with multiple legal entities — and the foreign buyer needs to understand which one they are actually contracting with.

3. As the input for cross-database lookups

Court judgment databases, IP databases, and customs databases all key on USCC, making it the master identifier for advanced due diligence.

When you are running checks across multiple Chinese government systems, the USCC is the most reliable identifier to carry between them. Chinese names occasionally have minor variants (extra spaces, alternate punctuation); USCCs do not.

Where to find the USCC

If a Chinese counterparty cannot or will not provide their USCC, treat this as a serious red flag. A USCC is not confidential — it is published on every public-facing official document. Refusal to share suggests either the company doesn't actually have a current registration or the company they're presenting is not the one they're using behind the scenes.

A worked example

Suppose you receive a Business License from your supplier and the USCC reads:

91440300708461136T

Decoding this:

• 9 — SAMR-managed registration
• 1 — issued by SAMR
• 440300 — Shenzhen, Guangdong Province
• 708461136 — entity sequence
• T — check digit

You can sanity-check this even before searching GSXT: the company should be registered in Shenzhen. If your supplier claims to be in Hangzhou but the USCC encodes a Shenzhen jurisdiction, something is wrong.

The full GSXT search by 91440300708461136T would return Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. — confirming the issuer.

What the USCC does not tell you

The USCC confirms identity. It does not confirm:

• That the company is in good standing (check registration status)
• That the company has paid in its capital (check paid-in capital)
• That the company can lawfully do what it claims (check business scope)
• That the company has no outstanding judgments (check enforcement databases)

The USCC is the key that unlocks all of the above checks. It is not the result.

Old codes and historical filings

Before 2015, Chinese companies had two separate identifiers: a registration number (注册号, typically 13–15 digits) and a tax ID. The USCC was introduced to consolidate these into one identifier, with a five-year transition period that ended in 2017.

You may occasionally encounter older documents (especially historical contracts or older filings) that show only the legacy registration number. For modern verification, always insist on the USCC. If a current Business License shows only an old registration number, the document is severely outdated and the company has not maintained its filings — itself a red flag.

What's next

You now know how to identify a Chinese company across documents. The next question is: who actually controls the company? That brings us to the Legal Representative — a role with no direct equivalent in Western corporate law. Continue to Chinese Legal Representative.