r/Business_in_China

i run a small business and i am tired of paying huge markups to middleman resellers. im trying to set up a long term relationship with a reliable manufacturer directly out of china. the main thing is i need a vendor who actually knows how to handle shipping to the us, canada, and australia without any major issues. i will be making regular bulk orders so i really just need someone consistent and communicative. let me know if you guys have a trusted wholesale contact you use.

Golden Full House Feast

Set Menu ¥1188

- Braised Pork Ribs with Abalone: ¥198

- Homemade Free‑range Chicken / Special Green‑headed Duck: ¥158

- Chopped Chili Fish Head: ¥98

- Hot‑pot Free‑range Beef: ¥188

- Homemade Wild Soft‑shelled Turtle: ¥398

- Blanched Green Vegetables in Salted Water: ¥78

- Salt & Pepper Prawns: ¥98

- Braised Peace Duck: ¥88

- Braised Sliced Pork with Oil Tofu: ¥58

- Iron‑plate Potatoes: ¥28

- Braised Carrots in Clay Pot: ¥28

- Boiled Dumplings with Dipping Sauce: ¥28

- Steamed Rice: ¥3

- Paper Napkins: ¥2

Happy Grand Reunion

Set Menu ¥899

- Homemade Wild Soft‑shelled Turtle: ¥398

- Braised Free‑range Pork with Pickled Vegetables: ¥78

- Hot‑pot Free‑range Beef: ¥188

- Homemade Mandarin Fish: ¥158

- Hot‑pot Cured Green‑headed Duck: ¥168

- Blanched Green Vegetables in Salted Water: ¥78

- Braised Free‑range Pork Belly in Big Bowl: ¥68

- Egg Yolk & Vermicelli Casserole: ¥38

- Pan‑fried Farmhouse Tofu: ¥22

- Braised Cauliflower in Big Bowl: ¥22

- Spicy Shredded Lotus Root: ¥22

- Steamed Rice: ¥3

- Paper Napkins: ¥2

Auspicious & Wishful Feast

Set Menu ¥388

- Homemade Free‑range Chicken: ¥158

- Braised Beef Brisket with Hyacinth Beans: ¥138

- Braised Pork with Oil Tofu: ¥58

- Stir‑fried Cured Pork with Garlic: ¥48

- Dry‑pot Crucian Carp: ¥58

- Egg Yolk & Vermicelli Casserole: ¥38

- Seasonal Vegetables: ¥22

- Steamed Rice: ¥3

Set Menu for About Ten People

Set Menu ¥688

- Homemade Free‑range Chicken: ¥158

- Spicy Beef Slices: ¥118

- Dry‑pot Pork Offal: ¥68

- Homemade Mandarin Fish: ¥158

- Shimen Fatty Pork Intestines: ¥138

- Braised Pork Bones with Radish: ¥68

- Braised Free‑range Pork Belly in Big Bowl: ¥68

- Stir‑fried Cured Pork with Garlic: ¥58

- Shredded Lettuce Leaves: ¥22

- Seasonal Vegetables: ¥22

- Boiled Dumplings with Dipping Sauce: ¥28

- Steamed Rice: ¥3

- Paper Napkins: ¥2

Hi,

I'm looking for a reliable supplier that meets my requirements for wholesale from China etc Apple iPhones 

- 100% genuine Apple parts
- Original boxes
- Battery health above 75%
- Genuine devices 
- Any iPhone model from 2024 onwards

I can do  20-80 units per month for the right product and price 

DM me 

Small DTC brands managing China-sourced inventory face a version of the problem that most software is not built to handle at their scale or price point.

Approaches that tend to actually work:

Treating "in production" and "in transit" as separate inventory states rather than one combined "on order" bucket

Building a simple tracker in Airtable or Notion that maps to actual production milestones rather than calendar estimates

Working with a freight forwarder who sends proactive status updates at each stage instead of waiting to be chased

Keeping safety stock calculations separate from reorder points and updating them quarterly rather than expecting the system to do it dynamically

For the folks who don't have time, here's why:
Google doesn't exist there. Neither does Reddit. ChatGPT is blocked. Gemini is blocked. Your backlinks don't count. Your press releases don't count. Your PDFs don't count. The crawlers reading your site have names you've never heard of. And the Chinese models answer from training data, not live search, so the content you publish today might not show up for months.
Different internet. Different rules. Different playbook.

Want me to get a bit more technical? Here's the full breakdown.
We ran a brand visibility audit across 6 Chinese tech hubs (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou) for a US B2B client. Same prompts, two sets of models: Western LLMs vs. Qwen (Alibaba) and DeepSeek.
The results weren't just different in degree. They were structurally different.

1. Different training corpus, different internet. Qwen and DeepSeek weren't trained on Reddit, Hacker News, or English trade press. They learned from Baidu-indexed content, Zhihu technical columns, eet-china -com, 21ic-com, elecfans-com.

If you're not on those platforms, you don't exist in Chinese AI answers. Your Google ranking is irrelevant.

2. First-party content dominates. Western AEO leans on third-party authority like backlinks, reviews, analyst coverage. In Chinese LLMs, citation analysis tells a different story: your own domain gets cited more than any single trade publication.

Every product page with full specs in crawlable HTML. Every application note. Every design brief. That's the lever.

PDFs don't move the needle. Press releases don't either.

3. Crawlers you've never heard of are already on your site. Baiduspider. QwenBot. DeepSeekBot. ByteDance crawlers.
   Two questions: Is your CDN blocking them? (Many sit on Alibaba Cloud and Tencent ASNs that default firewalls flag.) And are you serving zh-CN localized pages?

A missing hreflang tag is the single most common reason Western brands underindex in Chinese AI.

4. Training cycles, not publishing cycles. Perplexity and Gemini do live web search. You can influence them this week. Qwen and DeepSeek answer mostly from training data.

That means your window to shape outputs is the next training cut, not your editorial calendar. Syndicate to the platforms they index now.

5. ChatGPT is blocked. Gemini is blocked. Measuring "AI visibility" with only Western models for a China strategy is measuring the wrong thing.
   If you sell B2B into China, your AEO strategy needs a separate Chinese LLM track.

It's not a translation problem. It's a different internet.

​

I want someone who's in import/export business from china or intermediaries between buyers and suppliers.Someone who has active contacts on the ground there.

I’ve seen how badly this process goes for people who go in blind. Ghosted suppliers, quality issues, payments lost, samples that look nothing like the final order.

We are a small business, want to source few products from China. In the past I've worked with few good people there but in the time I lost the buisness and network both but we are starting again

I don't want a massive agency who eats money, just someone with a real network and actual context on how things work over there.

Would be Happy if someone can help in real.

Salut a tous.

Je voudrais faire l'achat du robot de pente radiocommandé et les tarifs des modèles chinois sont plutôt attrayant, je voudrais savoir si certains d'entre vous ont déjà tenté le coup ?

A combien vous est revenu la machine une fois livré et tout les frais de douane et la qualité est il bonne ou pas du tout

Hi everyone! I've worked at BYD for many years, and I personally drive a BYD Song Plus DM-i. Ask me anything! (AMA)

Why is almost everything made in China and not in every country like the US, Canada, or the UK?

The distinction matters a lot more than most people realize when you are trying to own your supply chain and understand what you are actually paying for. The three setups that come up most in this conversation:

Best fulfill: Works through a supplier network that includes trading companies alongside direct factories. Efficient for catalog products but factory-direct accountability on quality is not guaranteed when a trading layer sits in between.

Kanary solutions: Routes sourcing around trading companies by vetting factories directly through on-the-ground audits. The cost structure reflects factory-direct pricing rather than trader margins built on top.

Ecomm flow: Combined sourcing and service model similar to best fulfill. Streamlines operations but trading companies may be part of the mix, which reduces factory-level accountability.

The legal entity and business license type of any Chinese supplier is publicly verifiable and most buyers never check it.

Genuinely confused.

Do new businesses with small MOQs and a limited number of SKUs work directly with factories or use sourcing agents?

I know that sourcing agents can be helpful with communication, QCs etc but unsure as to whether it’s worth paying the additional cost for a new business?

For someone who has a couple factories lined up, received samples etc, do I just crack on with the factories directly or go via a sourcing agent?

Any and all inputs from people who’ve been in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working with Canadian lumber suppliers, mainly in British Columbia, and I’m looking to connect with buyers/importers in China interested in Canadian softwood products such as Western Red Cedar, Hemlock, and Douglas Fir.

If you’re a buyer, importer, distributor, or know companies involved in lumber imports in China, I’d really appreciate connecting. Even advice on where to network/find buyers would help a lot.

Feel free to DM me or comment below. Thanks!