Obtaining financial information in China

China’s political system is not very transparent, but corporate and financial information is often readily available to the public.

Thirty years of economic reform — and government policies aimed at attracting foreign investment — have created a set of government agencies that keep records on private corporations and their major shareholders, including copies of resumes and government-issued identity cards.

It is this system that allows news organizations, including The New York Times, to request and review corporate records. Although ordinary citizens are not allowed access to the records, they can hire a lawyer or consulting firm to request documents for a fee of $100 to $200 per company. The Times used this process in obtaining thousands of pages of corporate documents to review the business networks controlled by the relatives of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

In many cities, the local branch of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, or the SAIC., as it is known, provides records for companies that are incorporated.

Corporate files often include details of when and where the company was incorporated, the name of the company’s legal representative and a list of major shareholders.

locally There is often financial information, including a company’s registered capital.

China recently tightened access to corporate information, possibly because of a growing number of corporate fraud scandals, but also media investigations into the fortunes held by the relatives of political leaders, including the former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai.

In Beijing, for much of this year, it has been difficult to obtain corporate records from the local bureau of the SAIC.

Still, most records remain publicly available, and beginning late last year The Times reviewed documents obtained in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenzhen and other cities.

The records allowed The Times to trace a network of friends and relatives of the prime minister as they built a multibillion-dollar business empire over the last decade, often with the aid of wealthy entrepreneurs.