溯源Provenance

Canton has run this trade for three hundred years.

Where we work, why we work this way, and who signs the terms.

The place

Guangzhou — Canton — is where China's export trade has run since the age of sail. For a century, every cargo the West bought from China cleared through this port; when the season's first tea ships raced home, the first cargo commanded the season's best price.

That is still the business we are in: being first, and being trusted. The Canton Fair is a metro ride away. The Pearl River Delta — the densest manufacturing belt on earth — starts at the city limits. The wholesale markets where trends surface weeks before they reach overseas marketplaces are our daily ground.

"In a business built on trust across oceans, we put ours in writing."

The operators

ChinaTwelve is operated from Guangzhou by a team with fifteen years in cross-border commerce — flagship Chinese electronics sold into developed markets, with the payment rails, battery logistics and customs clearance that only come from having actually done it, year after year.

Every transaction runs on terms drafted and reviewed by a practicing China-based trade lawyer: deposits protected, refund conditions explicit, dispute resolution agreed before a single unit ships.

And we stay deliberately small: twelve products, a few partners per product, per region. First and few — not everywhere and average.

Four things we actually bring

i.

At the source

Based in Guangzhou — home of the Canton Fair, the Pearl River Delta factory belt, and the wholesale markets where trends surface first. We see what is heating up before it reaches overseas marketplaces.

ii.

Proven rails

Cross-border payments, dangerous-goods and battery freight, customs clearance — operated for over a decade, not outsourced to a directory. This is why we can quote DDP and mean it.

iii.

Legal spine

Terms, deposits and dispute resolution drafted by a practicing Chinese trade lawyer. If we cannot deliver, you get your money back — and that sentence is in the contract, not just on this page.

iv.

Deliberate scale

Twelve seats, contested daily by our monitoring system, changed only when a challenger truly runs hotter. Scarcity here is not a marketing device — it is how one team keeps every promise it makes.

See what earned a seat.

The Current Twelve Early access