How to vet a freelancer in China before you hire

Someone doing business in China gave that advice in a 2018 thread from a buyer who wanted to hire freelancers there. It was right. Nobody in the thread said how to do it from abroad, so here is one way: five checks, cheapest first.

The proof ladder: five checks, cheapest first

Guide times are our editorial guidance for planning, not research figures. Each rung costs more than the one before it, so a candidate who fails early costs you little.

Run the rungs in order. The first four take you about an hour and a quarter in all. They decide who gets to rung 5, and rung 5 is the only one that shows you how the real job will go.

Running each check from abroad

Rung 1: read the bid against your brief

A bid written for your brief puts your goal in its own words and says what arrives first. A bid written for any brief talks mostly about the bidder.

Example, written for this page:

• Generic: “I have rich experience and can finish your project with high quality.”
• Specific: “You need three furniture suppliers in Foshan audited before May 20. I would visit two on day one and one on day two, and send a photo report on each by day four.”
• Why it matters: the second could only have been written by someone who read your brief.

Keep bids like the second. Before you drop one like the first, ask its author one question about your brief. A good answer can rescue a weak bid.

Reading a bid covers the rest. A sharp brief makes generic bids easy to spot, and how to write a brief a freelancer can bid on shows how.

Rung 2: one dated past deliverable

Ask for one piece of past work, with a date on it, and a version with the client’s name blacked out. A freelancer may be under a confidentiality duty to a past client, and one who sends a client’s documents unredacted would do the same with yours. If every past job really is under a confidentiality agreement, ask for something they made for themselves, or for a sample with the content swapped out and only the structure left.

References are harder from abroad. A past client outside China who will answer a short email in English is worth asking. A reference you can’t read or call adds little, so let the deliverable do that work.

Then put it on a call and ask five questions:

1. What was the brief?
2. What changed between the brief and the delivery?
3. What would you do differently now?
4. Who signed it off?
5. When was it delivered?

Listen to the answers more than you look at the file. A person who made the work can usually take you through one decision in it, and why they made it. A person who borrowed it tends to describe the result instead.

Rung 3: the official lookups

Two kinds of credentials can be checked against an official record: a Chinese higher-education qualification or degree, and a CATTI translator or interpreter certificate. In both cases the candidate runs the lookup and shares the result. Don’t ask for their login, and don’t use it if it’s offered.

Both services were read on October 18, 2026. CHSI opened from outside China. The certificate lookup in the CATTI menu leads to the human resources ministry’s national service platform (12333.gov.cn), which asks for a personal login, and cpta.com.cn refused our connection. If you cannot open a record yourself, ask the candidate to open it on a shared screen during the rung 4 call.

Plenty of good freelancers have no degree or certificate that matters for the job, and a missing record is not a warning sign. What should worry you is a record that doesn’t match.

A CHSI report proves that a named person holds a named qualification. It doesn’t prove that the person on your call is that person, and it says nothing about skill. Treat it as support for the rest of the profile, no more.

Once you’ve checked a report, delete your copy. Write down the date you checked it and what it showed, and keep only that note.

Rung 4: a 20-minute live call

Hold it in the language the two of you will work in. That is usually English. The work itself may happen in Chinese, with suppliers or on Chinese sources, but what comes back to you will be in that shared language, so test it.

Twenty minutes is enough. Listen for whether they can restate your goal without prompting, and whether they ask a question you hadn’t thought of. Notice, too, how often either of you has to repeat a sentence.

Spoken English and written English are different skills. Someone who is hesitant on a call may write a clear report, and the trial will show that. If you couldn’t follow them at all, though, plan on that lasting: a person you needed an interpreter for in a 20-minute call will need one for the whole job.

China runs on one clock, eight hours ahead of UTC. Working across time zones with a freelancer in China helps you find a slot that is not midnight for either of you.

Rung 5: a paid trial milestone

Size it as a real slice of the job: one or two days of their work, delivered within two to five working days, with its own acceptance criteria written down before it starts. Pay it at the rate in the bid, whatever the result. If it passes, it becomes milestone one.

Write the criteria so that a stranger could check them. Example: for a supplier search, “five suppliers in Zhejiang that make stainless steel bottles, each with its registered Chinese name, its unified social credit code, a contact who answered and a minimum order quantity, in an English table, by Friday.” Each item is there or it isn’t, and nobody has to argue later about whether the trial passed.

If it fails, pay it and stop. You’ve spent the price of one small milestone and learned what you needed to know.

A trial with its own deliverable and criteria is project work. Under China’s 2005 test, a working relationship would start to look like employment only if the person worked under your rules and management, on paid work you arrange, as part of your business. Contractor or employee sets out where that line falls.

Ask for the trial to be priced on its own line in the bid. To judge whether that price is reasonable, what freelancers in China charge has the reference figures.

What you should not ask for

Checking identity and bank details is the job of whoever pays the freelancer in China, because that payer needs them to make the payment and to withhold income tax on it. None of it helps you judge a design or a factory report.

Red flags that end the process

• They ask to be paid outside the agreed route, or to a third person.
• They ask for the full fee before any delivery.
• They refuse a paid trial, yet offer to deliver the entire job before you pay anything.
• A piece in their portfolio turns up under someone else’s name when you run a reverse image search.
• They want to move the conversation to a channel where you cannot keep a record.

Any one of these is enough. There’s no need to argue or ask why. Thank them, close the conversation and go back to the other bids. The Pay chapter explains which routes are normal, so you can tell an odd request from an ordinary one.

Vetting by kind of work

If you skimmed the rungs, this table is the short version. The best evidence differs by field. The second column comes from the “What is vetted” list on each category page.

The full list of categories covers the other ten.

If you would rather not run the checks yourself

The open marketplace is the default way to hire on ChinaTalentDesk. Candidate vetting on your behalf is an optional paid service, and the agreed scope for it is confirmed before it starts, as Pricing sets out.

Once the trial milestone is accepted, the next step is the agreement. Chapter 3, Contract, covers the clauses, starting with who owns the work. If you are still building a shortlist, chapter 1, Find, comes first, and the handbook overview has all five.

Post the brief, and size the first milestone as the trial. Start a brief.