China Supplier Evaluation Checklist

1. Define the evaluation basis

Supplier evaluation starts with a usable product and project brief. Without one, a supplier can appear responsive while answering a different question from the one your business needs to solve.

• Write the product purpose, specifications, materials, performance, appearance, accessories, labeling, and packaging requirements.
• Identify mandatory requirements and negotiable preferences.
• State sample, pilot, and expected production quantities without presenting forecasts as guaranteed orders.
• Define target milestones and the evidence needed to complete each one.
• List known product-safety, battery, radio, chemical, food-contact, environmental, labeling, or destination-market concerns.
• Decide which evidence you will accept and who can approve a deviation.

Checkpoint: If suppliers are quoting different materials, components, tooling, packing, test assumptions, or delivery terms, normalize the scope before comparing price.

2. Confirm identity and the supplier's business role

The company communicating with you, the company receiving payment, the entity on the business license, the facility producing goods, and the exporter may not always be the same. That can be legitimate, but the relationships should be understood and documented.

Identity checklist

• ☐ Obtain the supplier's registered Chinese company name and registration information.
• ☐ Confirm the English name is linked to the same entity rather than relying on translation alone.
• ☐ Compare the quotation, contract, invoice, bank beneficiary, and payment instructions.
• ☐ Ask who owns or operates the production facility and who will manufacture the order.
• ☐ Identify any trading company, subcontractor, export agent, affiliate, or third-party payee.
• ☐ Independently verify changes to payment details through a known contact and controlled process.

A registration record does not prove capability, capacity, quality, solvency, or product compliance. For material legal or financial exposure, use appropriately qualified legal, financial, or due-diligence providers.

3. Ask for product-specific capability evidence

“We can make it” is a starting statement. The next step is evidence connected to your product, materials, processes, tolerances, volumes, and critical components.

Capability checklist

• ☐ Ask which production steps are performed internally and which are subcontracted.
• ☐ Review equipment, tooling, process flow, workforce skills, and quality-control points relevant to your product.
• ☐ Request recent, relevant examples without asking the supplier to breach another customer's confidentiality.
• ☐ Ask how critical materials and components are sourced, approved, identified, and controlled.
• ☐ Confirm the assumptions behind quoted capacity and lead time.
• ☐ Identify seasonal, maintenance, tooling, component, or subcontractor constraints.
• ☐ Define what would trigger a capacity or process re-evaluation.

A facility visit or qualified audit can test defined questions, but a visit is not proof of future performance. Before arranging one, write down the evidence the reviewer should collect and the limitations of the review.

4. Control samples and the approved product version

A good sample is useful only if the team can identify what it represents and transfer that definition into production.

Sample checklist

• ☐ Give each sample a version number, date, supplier, and purpose.
• ☐ Record the material, component, tooling, finish, firmware, packaging, and process assumptions behind it.
• ☐ Compare the sample with a written checklist and defined test methods.
• ☐ Photograph and record deviations rather than relying on chat history.
• ☐ State whether the sample is rejected, conditionally accepted, or approved as a reference.
• ☐ List changes required before the next sample or production.
• ☐ Confirm how an approved reference sample will be retained, protected, and used.

If samples from several factories need to be received and compared, Jinghang can coordinate agreed sample and procurement support. Final product acceptance criteria remain a client decision unless a different written scope is agreed.

5. Review quality management and change control

Ask how the supplier prevents, detects, records, and responds to problems. A certificate title or a generic quality manual is not enough to show how your product will be controlled.

Quality checklist

• ☐ Identify critical-to-quality requirements and the process step where each one is checked.
• ☐ Review incoming-material, first-article, in-process, final, and packing controls that may apply.
• ☐ Confirm test methods, equipment, calibration or verification practices, and record retention where relevant.
• ☐ Define lot, batch, component, serial, or date-code traceability needed for the product.
• ☐ Ask how nonconforming material is identified, segregated, reviewed, reworked, or disposed of.
• ☐ Define who investigates a failure and how corrective action is verified.
• ☐ Require approval before material, component, process, tooling, site, subcontractor, firmware, label, or packaging changes that affect the agreed product.
• ☐ Agree the pre-shipment inspection plan, access, timing, checklist, evidence, and release authority.

Inspection is a risk-control activity within the agreed method and coverage. It is not a guarantee that every unit is defect-free and does not replace engineering validation, laboratory testing, certification, or regulatory approval. Learn more about quality control and inspection coordination.

6. Align commercial terms and decision rights

Commercial clarity helps prevent a technical disagreement from becoming a payment, ownership, or delivery dispute.

Commercial checklist

• ☐ Confirm the exact product scope, quantity, currency, unit price, tooling, samples, packing, taxes, and excluded costs.
• ☐ Define payment milestones and the evidence or event linked to each payment.
• ☐ Clarify tooling ownership, maintenance, storage, access, and transfer.
• ☐ Define ownership and permitted use of drawings, firmware, brand assets, molds, and confidential information.
• ☐ Establish written change control for specifications, quantity, price, timing, and delivery.
• ☐ State the applicable delivery rule and named place rather than using “door to door” alone.
• ☐ Agree how delays, nonconformity, rework, reinspection, shortages, damage, and cancellation are handled.
• ☐ Use qualified legal advice for contracts and enforceability where the exposure justifies it.

A low quotation is not favorable if it excludes required tooling, testing, documentation, packing, duties, tax, delivery, or corrective work. Ask the supplier to identify exclusions and assumptions explicitly.

7. Confirm compliance inputs, packing, and shipment readiness

Do not wait until goods are finished to ask whether they can be lawfully and practically shipped, imported, and sold in the intended market.

Readiness checklist

• ☐ Identify the product's intended use, destination, importer, and sales channel.
• ☐ Determine which party is responsible for product compliance, testing, certification, labels, manuals, records, and market access.
• ☐ Review the relevance, issuer, model coverage, version, dates, and authenticity of documents rather than accepting filenames.
• ☐ Confirm batteries, liquids, powders, magnets, chemicals, food-contact use, brands, oversized dimensions, or other sensitive attributes are declared accurately.
• ☐ Approve unit packing, inner protection, cartons, marks, barcodes, pallets, and any route-specific preparation.
• ☐ Confirm packed quantity, dimensions, gross weight, cargo value, and ready date.
• ☐ Align shipper, consignee, importer, customs, duties, taxes, insurance, delivery, and final-site responsibilities.
• ☐ Do not release cargo until agreed quality, packing, document, and commercial gates are complete.

Product, dangerous-goods, carrier, export, import, customs, duty, tax, and market requirements vary and can change. Verify the actual case with qualified testing or certification providers, the selected carrier, customs broker, importer, and relevant authorities. For delivery responsibilities, see DDP vs DAP Shipping From China.

8. Make a documented decision

Do not turn the checklist into one unsupported score. Separate evidence, uncertainty, and decision severity.

Recommended decision record

1. Confirmed: evidence is current, relevant, and independently consistent.
2. Conditionally acceptable: the issue has an owner, deadline, and evidence required before the next commitment.
3. Unverified: the claim remains an assumption and is not used as the basis for approval.
4. Unacceptable: the risk conflicts with a mandatory product, commercial, compliance, or ethical requirement.

Signals that require clarification or escalation

• identity, bank, invoice, contracting, or production entities do not align and the relationship is not explained;
• pressure to pay a changed account without controlled verification;
• reluctance to define materials, subcontracting, change control, quality evidence, or packing;
• documents do not cover the quoted model, current version, intended market, or actual manufacturer;
• a request for inaccurate descriptions, values, origin, or customs declarations;
• production is requested before the sample, specification, commercial scope, or inspection plan is approved.

If the decision remains unclear, return to the operating model in How to Source Products from China Without an In-House Team and assign the missing verification to a named owner.