14 guides on the commercial side of buying from China — negotiating the real price, writing the contract that holds, and paying so the money is never the hostage. Written from deals closed with buyers in Europe, Africa, the Gulf, the CIS and beyond.
By the time you are typing a bank transfer, the protection you have is the protection you negotiated weeks earlier. The price you accepted decides the supplier’s incentive to perform. The contract you signed decides what happens when they do not. The payment structure decides who carries the risk between milestones — you, or them.
That is why these guides run as a ladder: negotiate the real price first, write the terms that protect both sides, then choose the payment method and structure that fits the deal size. Skip a rung and the rungs above it cannot hold.
Chinese factory pricing has structure — rebates, hidden costs, negotiable layers. Knowing it is the difference between negotiating and guessing.
Batch terms, after-sales locks, tooling ownership — the clauses that decide who owns what when the relationship is tested.
T/T, L/C, milestones and contingencies — payment structures that keep both sides honest, whatever the deal size.
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Tell us the deal — product, value, terms on the table. We structure payments between international buyers and Chinese factories every week, and we will tell you where the risk actually sits.