A bilingual field guide to Baidu, Chinese-language query pivots, public records, and verification — published by Argelius Labs.

Western OSINT researchers consistently underperform on China-focused work for one reason: they treat the Chinese-language internet as a translated copy of the English-language web. It isn't. The highest-value records — company registries, procurement awards, court and enforcement data, regulatory penalties, patents, disclosures — are indexed under Chinese names, Chinese pivot terms, Chinese identifiers, and Chinese document conventions, and they surface on different engines and official portals than the ones English-speakers default to.

This repository is a practical, bilingual playbook for doing that work well and lawfully.

📖 Read the guide

→ guide.md — the full field guide (28 sections).

Every Chinese query, keyword, and operator is paired with an English translation, so you can use it whether or not you read Chinese.

What's inside

  • A repeatable workflow: resolve the canonical Chinese identity, pivot on one Chinese term at a time, constrain by source and file type, then move from search engines to primary portals.
  • Baidu search syntax and how it differs from Google — with honest caveats about what each operator actually does.
  • Ready-to-use "dork" libraries for corporate ownership, listed-company disclosures, people and biographies, government and regulatory records, procurement and tenders, litigation and enforcement, IP and standards, technical footprint, locations, and social platforms.
  • A map of official, high-value Chinese source portals (registries, courts, procurement, IP, securities, standards, maps).
  • Verification discipline: a source hierarchy, status words that change a record's meaning, common analytical traps, an evidence-log template, and preservation/integrity steps.
  • Troubleshooting, classroom exercises, a quick-reference cheat sheet, and a briefing-slide summary.

Who it's for

OSINT students, investigators, journalists, researchers, analysts, due-diligence teams, and technical professionals doing lawful research on information that is intentionally public.

⚠️ Read this first

This is open-source intelligence material — it covers information intentionally made public. It does not teach bypassing access controls, credential hunting, scraping in violation of law or terms, or collecting private personal data without a lawful purpose.

It is educational material and not legal advice, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government, agency, search engine, or platform named within it. Researching Chinese entities can carry legal exposure for you as the collector — including under China's Data Security Law, PIPL, and Counter-Espionage Law — depending on the subject, your location, and what you do with the data. See Section 1 of the guide before you start.

Maintenance

Search engines and official portals change. Before relying on a specific operator or link, test it against the live interface. The guide's "Last reviewed" date reflects the most recent check.

© Argelius Labs · argeliuslabs.com · China Web OSINT Search Dorks is provided for educational use under CC BY 4.0.