Finding Chinese company filings starts with the listed issuer, not the brand name. Before downloading a report, confirm the company’s legal name, listing venue and stock code. Then search the relevant disclosure archive and use the company’s investor relations pages as a second route to the same documents.
For English-language research, separate three tasks: locating the original disclosure, finding an issuer-published English version, and checking that both cover the same entity and reporting period. An English earnings presentation can help you get started. It should not become a substitute for the financial statements and their notes.
Identify the Issuer Before Searching
Create a short identity record before opening a filing database. Include the full English and Chinese company names, exchange, stock code, financial year end and official investor relations address. For a US reporting company, also record its SEC Central Index Key, or CIK.
Keep separate entries for the issuer and any similarly named parent or subsidiary. If the security itself is unclear, establish the distinction between Chinese A-shares, H-shares and ADRs before collecting reports. The document you need must belong to the entity behind the investment you are researching.
Do not assume that two companies sharing a group name publish interchangeable accounts. Check the report cover, company information section and group structure. A report for a listed subsidiary is not automatically a report for the whole corporate group.
| Listing or reporting route | Starting point | First document to locate |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong listing | HKEXnews listed company publications | Full annual report, followed by later announcements |
| Shanghai listing | Shanghai Stock Exchange announcement archive | Annual report and any subsequent corrections |
| Shenzhen listing | CNINFO disclosure search | Full annual report, with an English version if published |
| Beijing listing | Select the Beijing market in CNINFO | Annual report for the verified issuer and stock code |
| US reporting issuer | SEC EDGAR company search | Annual filing under the issuer’s reporting regime |
Finding Reports for Hong Kong Listings
The HKEXnews Listed Company Information Title Search provides a route to issuer announcements, annual reports, circulars and prospectuses. Use the stock code to reduce name ambiguity, then narrow the publication dates and document category.
For an annual report, search beyond the financial year itself. A report covering a year ended December 31 will be published after that reporting date. If the first search returns nothing, widen the publication window rather than immediately concluding that the document is missing.
Distinguish the annual results announcement from the annual report. Save both when relevant, but inspect their contents before treating them as equivalent. Look for the complete financial statements, accounting policies, supporting notes and auditor’s report in the document you intend to use for detailed research.
After finding the annual report, run a second search covering the period from its publication to your research date. Look for corrections, revised reports, auditor changes, financing announcements and material transactions. A report can be the right annual report and still be an incomplete account of what has happened since.
Finding Mainland Chinese Company Filings
Shanghai Stock Exchange
The Shanghai Stock Exchange listed company announcement archive offers stock-code and date searches, with separate Main Board and STAR Market sections. Use it to locate the issuer’s disclosure stream, then inspect the actual document rather than relying on its displayed title.
An English interface or translated announcement title does not establish that the attached report is fully available in English. Open the file and check its language, length and contents. If an English search produces thin results, repeat the search using the issuer’s Chinese name and stock code in the Chinese disclosure interface.
Keep the full report separate from its summary. A short document may be useful for confirming headline figures, but it is not the right endpoint when you need the accompanying disclosures. Check that the downloaded file includes the sections relevant to your research question.
CNINFO for Mainland Disclosure Searches
CNINFO’s company disclosure search includes market selections for Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. CNINFO identifies itself as Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s official disclosure website, operated by the exchange’s wholly owned information subsidiary.
Start with the stock code, select the relevant market and set a publication window. Search by report type where the interface permits. If results are missing, remove narrow filters one at a time: market, document category, keyword and date range.
A small Chinese search vocabulary helps. Useful terms include 年度报告 for annual report, 半年度报告 for half-year report, 第一季度报告 for first-quarter report and 第三季度报告 for third-quarter report. Add 英文 to look for English-language documents, but also search without it so that you do not miss the original disclosure.
Watch for 摘要, meaning summary, and search for 更正 or 修订, indicating a correction or revision. Treat these words as search aids, not proof of a document’s status. Open the announcement and establish exactly what changed.
Finding Chinese Company Reports on SEC EDGAR
The SEC’s EDGAR filing search supports searches by company name, ticker or CIK. Once you have identified the correct issuer, save its CIK in your research record. EDGAR also provides full-text searches with company, filing category and date filters.
Check the legal name on the filing cover against your issuer record. Do not stop at a familiar trading symbol or brand. Open the filing’s document list as well as the main report, particularly when the information you need appears to be missing from a short covering document.
Search the annual report first, then review subsequent reports through your research date. For a financing or acquisition question, also inspect the relevant registration statement, prospectus or attached agreement rather than expecting the annual report to contain every later development.
Know Which SEC Forms to Search
Foreign private issuers may use different forms from US domestic reporting companies. Form 20-F can serve as an annual report or registration statement; its cover identifies the purpose. Form 6-K carries disclosures such as press releases and shareholder communications, while Form F-1 is a registration statement. These distinctions appear in the SEC’s guide to researching investments through EDGAR.
Search the issuer’s actual filing history rather than assuming it will publish a 10-K or 10-Q. When opening a 6-K, check the attachments: the covering document may not contain the results release or presentation you wanted.
For a question about ownership, locate the group structure and relevant contractual disclosures within the filing. Keep the broader explanation of what shareholders own through a Chinese VIE structure separate from the practical task of finding those documents.
Finding and Checking English-Language Reports
Use the issuer’s investor relations archive to look for English annual reports, results releases, presentations and supplementary materials. Reach that archive through the verified corporate site or a link in an official filing. A search engine result is a useful lead, not an identity check.
Search the company name alongside the reporting year and phrases such as “annual report English” or “financial results.” For an older report, check the archive’s year filters before assuming it has been removed. If the file cannot be found, ask investor relations for the complete report and its original publication date.
English annual reports are also available within mainland disclosure archives. Chongqing Brewery’s English annual report for 2023, hosted on CNINFO, is one example. It illustrates why a mainland listing should not end your English-language search, although it does not establish what another issuer publishes.
Before using an English document, check whether it is a complete report, an extract or a presentation. Read any language-precedence notice and identify who published the translation. Keep the original-language document beside it when the wording affects your analysis.
Do not assume that an issuer-published translation is identical in every respect to the original. Compare the reporting period, principal statements, note references and later corrections. If a material difference remains unresolved, record the uncertainty rather than choosing whichever version is easier to read.
Use Translation Without Losing the Accounting Meaning
Machine translation can help locate relevant passages, but use it as a reading aid rather than the evidence itself. Preserve the original PDF and keep translated extracts in a separate file. That makes it possible to trace a statement back to its source wording.
For scanned reports, apply optical character recognition before searching or translating, then check the extracted text against the page image. Pay particular attention to minus signs, decimal points, column headings and amounts in parentheses. A tidy spreadsheet can still contain a very untidy extraction error.
Verify currency and units before copying any figure. As a hypothetical example, 25,000 expressed in units of RMB10,000 equals RMB250 million. Copying the number without its unit would leave the calculation wrong by a factor of 10,000.
Check the scope of each table too. Record whether it presents consolidated figures or parent-company figures, the period covered and whether the amounts are audited, reviewed or unaudited as labelled. Do not translate away those distinctions.
Build a Complete Document Pack
Collect documents around a research question, not simply around a reporting year. For an initial company review, start with the latest full annual report, the preceding annual report and all relevant updates published since. Add transaction documents or older filings when they explain a change you are investigating.
Use a short completeness check before moving into analysis:
- Identity: Does the report belong to the correct listed issuer?
- Coverage: Is it the full report rather than a summary or presentation?
- Timing: Have you separated the reporting period from the publication date?
- Version: Have you checked for amendments, corrections and replacements?
- Traceability: Can each figure or quotation be traced to a page and document?
For an earnings question, retain the results release alongside the full report so you can reconcile the figures used in each. For a transaction question, retain the announcement, circular and any attached agreement that addresses the terms you are examining.
Finding the documents and interpreting them are separate jobs. Once the pack is complete, move to reading Chinese company financial statements rather than drawing a valuation judgment from a filing title or headline profit figure.
Keep an Audit Trail You Can Reuse
Save files with consistent names containing the issuer, reporting period, document type, language and publication date. Keep original downloads unchanged, with annotated or translated copies stored separately. Avoid names such as “latest annual report”; they stop being useful the moment another report arrives.
Maintain a simple document log with the original URL, download date, report title and version status. Add both the PDF page number and printed page number when they differ. For an important figure, record the table heading, currency and unit alongside the value.
If a report is replaced, retain the earlier copy but mark it as superseded. Note which calculations need updating. This turns a folder of PDFs into a research record that another reader, or your future self, can check.
The job is finished when you can identify the issuer, retrieve the complete disclosure, establish the version and trace your evidence back to it. Finding an English PDF is progress. Knowing exactly what that PDF represents is the useful part.