A creditor shipping goods into China who stops being paid has a narrow window before the debtor's bank accounts are moved or its stock is sold to another buyer. Interim relief and asset preservation in China exist to freeze that position while the underlying claim is prepared, but the application has to rest on a specific, well-evidenced request rather than a general fear of loss. This page sets out how that process runs, what decides whether a court grants the measure, and where our role ends and the local provider's role begins.
The application for interim measures is made to the court that would hear, or already hears, the substantive claim. It can be filed before the main proceeding starts or alongside it, and it asks the court to freeze a named asset – a bank balance, a shareholding, registered property, or receivables owed to the debtor – before that asset can be moved out of reach.
The court examines the request on the documents submitted, not on a hearing with live witnesses. A creditor who applies without settled evidence risks a refusal that also puts the debtor on notice of the claim. Where the same debtor holds assets in more than one country, the request in China is one part of a wider asset preservation strategy that has to be sequenced against parallel measures elsewhere.
Once granted, the order is served on the institution or registry holding the asset – a bank, a land registry, a company registry – rather than on the debtor directly at that stage. The debtor learns of the freeze once the institution acts on it, and formal notice follows through the court in the ordinary way.
Three things carry the file. A written contract or purchase order that ties the debt to a specific transaction, not a running account, is the first. Documents that show delivery or performance – shipping records, signed acceptance, correspondence acknowledging the debt – prepared and translated in the form the court expects, are the second. A named, identifiable asset in China that the order can attach is the third; a freeze cannot be granted against property the applicant cannot point to.
A debtor who disputes the underlying contract, or who has already moved the same assets into a separate corporate structure, changes this calculation considerably. We assess the file against these three points before recommending an application, not after one has been filed.
Confirming that a named asset exists and belongs to the debtor is legal research and corporate intelligence from public and licensed sources – company registries, court filings, land and shareholding records, and licensed commercial databases. The file is built only from documents a court will accept, gathered through registered channels rather than through methods that would draw the application into question.
The same standard applies to any correspondent instructed on the file. Preservation and enforcement work in China is carried out by admitted lawyers and licensed providers in the jurisdiction, working from the same public and licensed sources as the assessment stage. This sits inside the wider question of cross-border debt recovery in China, where the same registries and filings inform both the freeze and the substantive claim that follows it.
We assess the claim, confirm which asset is realistically reachable, and build the evidence bundle before any application is filed. We instruct and coordinate admitted lawyers and licensed providers in China who draft and file the application, appear before the court, and hold any funds the order releases. We do not appear before Chinese courts and we do not hold client money ourselves.
The fee basis for this coordinated work is agreed with the client before instruction, once the assessment stage has confirmed there is a named asset worth pursuing. Clients who are not yet sure an asset exists in China typically start with an asset and enforceability check rather than instructing the full application directly.
Yes, an application for interim measures can be made before the substantive claim, provided the underlying debt and a specific asset are already documented. The main claim generally has to follow the freeze within a set period, and we confirm that period against the current rules for a given file.
No. The application is examined on the papers, and the order is served on the institution holding the asset before the debtor is notified. That is why the evidence has to be complete before filing rather than assembled afterwards.
Without a named, identifiable asset the court has nothing to attach, and an application built on a general belief that the debtor holds property somewhere in China is likely to be refused. In that situation we advise against filing and set out what evidence would change the assessment.
An exporter watching a Chinese buyer's accounts empty while the invoice sits unpaid is working against a moving position, not a static one. The asset that could satisfy the claim today may not still be there once the shipment dispute has been argued over for months. That is the calculation this assessment is built to answer before any application is filed.