If you're reading this, you're probably at one of two moments: your Chinese supplier owes you money or goods and has stopped answering, or you're weighing whether to sue and want to understand the road ahead before you commit.
Here is the honest version. Suing a Chinese supplier is workable, rules-based, and increasingly routine for foreign parties. It is not instant, not cheap, and not guaranteed. The difference between buyers who recover their money and buyers who walk away empty-handed is rarely luck — it's whether they understood the sequence of steps below before they started.
Before any court filing, run the three questions that decide everything:
If all three answers are yes, litigation can genuinely deliver. If any one is doubtful, fix that problem first — verification before you pay exists precisely so you never reach this step with a shell company.
China is usually the right forum. The supplier is a Chinese company; its assets are in China; its shareholders, premises, and bank accounts are reachable only by a Chinese court. Suing in your own country produces a judgment that then has to be recognized and enforced in China — a longer, more fragile path. For most supplier disputes, the practical forum is the Chinese court where the defendant is domiciled or where the contract was performed.
Foreign parties can sue in China, and here's the rule that shapes everything: under Chinese civil procedure law, a foreign party participating in litigation in a Chinese court must be represented by a lawyer licensed to practice in China. This is not optional. Foreign lawyers may not appear as counsel in Chinese court proceedings. That's why, when your counterparty is Chinese, you want a China-licensed lawyer from day one — not just on the day you file.
Governing law: if your deal crosses two countries that are both contracting states of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) — China is, and most major trading partners are — the CISG applies automatically unless the parties have excluded it. That means your sale is governed by a body of rules designed for international trade, often alongside Chinese law on matters the CISG leaves open. The two systems work together, and your lawyer should know exactly how.
China's general limitation period for civil claims is three years from the date the right-holder knows or should have known of the infringement. There are exceptions and extensions, but plan for three years — and treat it as a deadline, not a suggestion.
The limitation clock can be interrupted — by the debtor acknowledging the claim, or by the creditor making a formal demand — which is one reason a documented demand letter is never wasted paperwork. But don't rely on a casual WhatsApp message to stop the clock; courts look at whether the demand clearly asserted the claim.
Chinese courts are evidence-driven in a very literal way. The case is won or lost on what you can show:
A disciplined habit saves cases: from the first sign of trouble, stop chatting casually and start documenting deliberately.
The single most under-used weapon in cross-border disputes is asset preservation (财产保全). Chinese courts can freeze bank accounts, seize goods, or attach other assets before or during the case — provided you apply promptly and provide security (which can usually be arranged cheaply through preservation insurance).
Why this matters: the moment a supplier learns it's being sued, its first instinct is often to move money. Preservation flips the order — assets are locked first, then the case proceeds at leisure. In disputes involving Chinese companies, I treat preservation as a default consideration, not an exception.
There's a trade-off to understand: preservation gives away that legal action has started. That's why the sequence in real cases is usually evidence → demand letter → preservation → filing, not the reverse. Get the sequence wrong and you hand the other side a head start.
The outline of a Chinese commercial case:
Throughout, your lawyer handles procedure, translation, and filings. Your job: provide documents, answer questions, and stay organized.
| Item | Reality |
|---|---|
| Court filing fee | Set by regulation as a percentage of claim value. The losing party generally bears the prevailing party's court fee. |
| Preservation security | Required to freeze assets; obtainable via insurance-backed guarantee at a small percentage of the preserved amount. |
| Notarization & legalization | For foreign-origin documents, depending on the country of origin and the Hague Convention. |
| Translation | All court submissions in Chinese; your copies in English. |
| Counsel fees | Agreed in advance. On this site's litigation service page, by fixed scope and fixed fee, in USD. |
Get a written cost and timeline estimate before you commit. If the economics don't make sense, the right advice may be not to litigate — a fixed-fee demand letter sometimes achieves more, faster, at a fraction of the cost.
Winning is not the finish line. Chinese courts enforce judgments through the execution system — freezing and garnishing accounts, seizing and auctioning assets, restricting travel and high consumption, and naming the company to the dishonest-debtor list. The harder question is whether there's anything to seize, which is why preservation and asset thinking come before the lawsuit, not after it.
Two enforcement realities worth knowing now:
Enforcement deserves its own treatment — read the full guide here, or see how we handle litigation and enforcement.
This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney–client relationship. Legal citations refer to the named statutes as currently in force; always confirm current law with counsel. Outcomes vary by case; nothing here is a guarantee of results.