Methodology: evidence, labeled.

Anyone can tell you a supplier "looks fine." We show you what we checked, where we checked it, and how much weight each finding can bear. Every line in a Golden Relay report carries one of three labels: VERIFIED CLAIM UNKNOWN

Layer 1 — Official Chinese registry data

Chinese corporate data is public — but it is published in Chinese, across fragmented systems. This is the layer most foreign buyers skip, and where most fraud is visible for free.

Source	What it proves
National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统)	Legal existence, registered capital, establishment date, legal representative, business scope, registered address, annual reports, penalties
Credit China (信用中国)	Administrative penalties, dishonesty records, tax violations
China Judgments Online / Enforcement disclosure (裁判文书网 / 执行信息公开网)	Litigation history, unpaid-judgment ("deadbeat") status of the entity and its legal representative
Trademark & patent registries (商标局 / 专利局)	Whether claimed brands, certifications, or "own IP" actually belong to this entity
Social insurance headcount disclosures	Real company size vs. claimed headcount — a "300-worker factory" insuring 8 people is a finding

Layer 2 — Desktop forensics

Entity-chain consistency: license name vs. contract entity vs. bank beneficiary vs. export entity — differences must be explainable in one sentence.
Certificate authenticity: every claimed certificate must name a standard, an issuing body, and a covered product/grade — and survive a registry check with that body.
Image & catalog forensics: reused photos, mismatched watermarks, and stock imagery across a catalog are cataloged as red flags.
Digital footprint timeline: domain age, storefront history, and claimed years-in-business are cross-examined against the registry record.

Layer 3 — Field verification (ground network)

When desktop layers pass, physical reality gets the final vote. Our field verification network covers mainland China and executes a standard protocol:

Timestamped exterior photography: building entrance, signage, unit number, street context;
Signage-to-entity match: does the name on the door match the entity you intend to pay?
Premises-type assessment: factory, office, warehouse, residential, vacant;
Activity observations, honestly labeled as observations — presence of staff, goods, vehicles — never presented as proof of capability.

Discipline: field observations answer "is there a real premises at this address." They do not certify production capability, quality systems, or solvency. Reports state this boundary explicitly — because overstated evidence is how buyers get burned twice.

The labeling standard

Label	Meaning
VERIFIED	Confirmed against an official registry, an original document, or direct field observation. Source named in the report.
CLAIM	Asserted by the supplier; not independently confirmed. Treated as marketing until upgraded.
UNKNOWN	No reliable information available. We write UNKNOWN rather than guess — an honest blank is worth more than a plausible story.

Why this works

Fraud depends on buyers checking the wrong layer: a polished storefront (marketing) instead of the registry (law), a certificate PDF (paper) instead of the issuing body (source), a video call (staged) instead of an unannounced site visit (reality). Our three layers run in the opposite order of how fraud is designed.