Background

I spent ten years exporting industrial electric motors — 380 V and above, low-voltage three-phase and high-voltage machines. That meant years inside motor and machinery plants: winding shops, machining lines, test benches and the warehouses behind them.

I know the machinery and mechanical-parts belts of Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hebei, and what a real factory in those categories looks like compared with a trading office that borrows one.

Recently I checked nine machinery suppliers in Shandong for an overseas importer. Three were not the manufacturer they presented themselves as — they were trading companies standing in front of someone else’s plant. In a separate case, a “bearing manufacturer” had zero insured employees on record and a company sign that had clearly been put up for visitors.

My working rule: I trust documents less than I trust the production floor. A licence tells you who signs the contract. The floor tells you who actually makes your product.