Check a factory in China without flying there

You can check a factory in China without going. Send one local freelancer for a day with your shot list and questions, and join by live video. Pay against a dated photo and video report. The visit confirms the factory exists, makes your product and looks as claimed. It doesn’t replace an accredited audit when a customer demands one.

Example. A buyer in Ohio has quotes from three factories in Dongguan and a flight search open in another tab. Going means a week away, and that week’s meetings would go ahead without the buyer. Before booking anything, the buyer wants one comparison: the cost of the trip against the cost of sending someone who is already there.

The hotel and meal figures in the calculator are not hotel prices. They are the scale rates HMRC publishes for UK employers to reimburse staff on trips abroad, city by city. They are public and dated, so you can see where each number came from. If you have a hotel quote, type it in instead.

HMRC lists only those four cities in China. For a factory in Shenzhen or Dongguan, its guidance is to use the closest city it lists, which is Guangzhou, or to enter your own figures.

The freelancer’s day rate is the one figure no public source gives you. It comes from the bids. For a sense of what freelancers in China charge, role by role, see what freelancers cost in China.

What a one-day visit can and cannot tell you

Read the two columns as two lists. A row on the left doesn’t match the row beside it.

Everything on the right is a different job, bought from a different kind of supplier. A sampled inspection follows a national standard; the AQL sample size calculator shows how many units it pulls from a lot of your size. What an inspection or an audit costs, and how it is priced, is on the factory inspection cost page.

The shot list

Send this list to the freelancer before the visit. Twenty shots sounds like a lot, but most of it is walking. The list runs in walking order, so they can follow it from the gate to the manager’s office. None of it needs special kit beyond a phone and a tape measure, though a spare battery helps. Ask for every photo and clip as the original file, so the date and time stay attached.

If the factory refuses a shot, the freelancer notes the refusal and the reason given, then moves on. One closed area can have an ordinary reason, such as another customer’s product on the line. A factory that refuses most of the list deserves a second question before you order.

1. The approach and the gate, with the name sign. The factory is where the quote says it is.
2. The phone’s map at the gate. The location, on screen, at the time of the visit.
3. The business license on the wall (营业执照), close enough to read. The name and the 18-character code match the record.
4. Reception, with the company name on the wall. The people you deal with work here.
5. The raw material store. What material they hold, and how they store it.
6. The labels on the material. Who supplies it, and what grade.
7. Each production line, in a wide shot. How many lines, and whether they are running.
8. The nameplate on a key machine. The type of machine and roughly how old it is.
9. A worker at your product’s step. Your kind of product is made here.
10. Work in progress at that step, close up. The standard of the work.
11. A slow pan of the main floor. The number of staff looks as claimed.
12. The quality control station. Whether there is one, and what tools it has.
13. One quality record sheet. Checks get written down.
14. The finished goods store. How goods are kept before shipping.
15. The packing area. Cartons, marks and how goods are packed.
16. The sample room. Your sample, or the product type you asked about.
17. Your sample next to your spec sheet, with a tape measure. The sample matches what you asked for.
18. The office. The size of the sales and engineering team.
19. Any other building the factory says is its own, from outside. The site is as large as claimed.
20. The manager answering three of your questions on camera. Who runs the place, and how they answer.

Ten questions to ask on the floor

The freelancer asks these in Chinese during the live call and translates the answers as they come. The Chinese wording is there so they can read it straight off the page. Ask for each answer in the report under its question, in English.

The factory may decline to say whose goods are on the line. That is normal, and the freelancer notes it in the report. Listen hardest to the answer on subcontracting. If a step goes out, the factory you visit isn’t the only one making your product, and you haven’t seen the other one.

When the answers will end up in a contract, a professional interpreter on the call is the safer choice. How to hire an interpreter in China covers that.

Booking and paying the visit

Once you have the shot list and the questions, booking takes four steps, in this order.

1. Send the registration record you found. Give the freelancer the company’s registered Chinese name and its 18-character unified social credit code (统一社会信用代码). They open the record in China and check it against the gate and the license on the wall.
2. Agree the shot list and the call slot. Put both in the brief, with the factory’s city and the date range. How to write a brief a freelancer in China can bid on shows the structure. Pick a call time inside the factory’s working day, and agree a call app that works in mainland China; the work tools a freelancer in China can reach lists them. Then tell the factory in writing the date and the name of the person coming for you, so they are expected at the gate.
3. Pay one milestone for the visit. The visit is one milestone, priced in the bid. Ask the freelancer to sign that they take nothing from the factory, using the line in How to hire a freelance sourcing agent in China. How the money reaches them in RMB is covered in Paying a freelancer in China.
4. Approve against the report. The report holds the 20 shots, the call recording or notes, and the answers to the ten questions, each dated. Approve the milestone when the report is complete. Whether you like the factory is for you to decide afterward.

Why the freelancer opens the record, and not you: companies in mainland China are registered with the market regulator, which publishes each record through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统). That site refused our check from outside China on October 18, 2026.

The law also requires the business license to hang in a prominent place at the registered address or main place of business, which is why shot 3 matters.

Our sister site TheChinaPath walks through the record in Verify a Chinese company on Qichacha and GSXT, and where to find freelancers in China covers finding someone close to the factory. Freelancers who do this kind of visit also bid on jobs in the sourcing and quality control category.

On ChinaTalentDesk, you fund the milestone before the visit, and work starts once it is paid. You approve the report against its criteria, and then the freelancer is paid. How it works shows each step, and Pricing lists the fees. For the wider job, start with How to hire a freelancer in China without speaking Chinese.

When to fly anyway

A first large order is worth the trip, because the money at stake outweighs a week out of the office. So is the start of a partnership you expect to run for years, where you want to know the owner and not only the line. And some problems only get settled with everyone in the same room.

Post the visit with your shot list, and compare the bids against your trip. Start a brief.