Free search for people in China: Absolutely find people anywhere in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan by addresses, phone numbers or names. This is the best way to locate someone's contact details.
Interestingly enough Google lists about 3.47 billion pages online in English for people search China even though it is thought that using the Internet to search for people in China is not completely allowed by the government. Check any websites for accurate information.
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China makes it a bit more difficult to find personal info about ppl in China. Blocking filters are somewhat heavy so many terms get filtered out of the search results. This shouldn't enter into searches for people's names but it is possible. The only way to find out is to conduct a search and view the results. Try searching for journalist Shi Tao who is in prison. Looking for such a popular name should return many results and is a good test of the quality and extent of a people database. Fairly often it should not be necessary to pay a paid search service to find background details about anyone.
Look4You claims to be the largest Chinese people finders in the worldwide world but actually the largest may be Google. The most sought after information appears to be relatives, addresses, reverse phone numbers and email addresses - very similar to searches conducted online. This service aims to help you find the true details you are looking for and possibly unmask an identity.
To locate a person locally in CN, enter a last name (and preferably a first name to narrow the search results) and press OK or Go. This is a fast way of searching.
China People Finder
A good people locator for China gazt.net which is actually a marriage search. Yahoo China (launched in 2007) may have developed into a useful store of information by now. Google of course is the largest search engine and since agreeing to comply with the Great Firewall of China's censorship, when an advanced people search for interdicted Chinese words on the PRC block google.cn displays a message starting that it is complying with laws, policies and regulations and is only shown partial results. Google states that it is better to participate in this way and gain a foothold in totally free speech than to not participate at all. This site provides a way of finding information.
Which search engines to use in China?
Baidu ('China's Google') is the most used search engine in China for a couple of reasons: 1) The Chinese government banned Google and Baidu is only in Chinese. (It's possible to search in China using Google using a VPN (Virtual Private Network. Bing allegedly works either way.) 2) It's completely free- no charge.
A main complaint about China's largest international search engine is the number of ads on the first page of search results. Surfer behavior may indicate that viewers skip to the second page of listings to reduce the number of ads displayed. Regardless, Baidu provides roughly two-thirds of desktop searches and 70% of mobile..
As search engines gain in popularity, they catch the eye of the oppressive government and get curtailed or banned if they don't fall in line with big-brother censorship. Many of the other search platforms (360, Bing China, Bing Taiwan, Google Hong Kong, Google Taiwan, Shenma, Sogou (in the popular app, WeChat), Yahoo Hong Kong, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Taiwan, Youdao) are either heavily censored or have links leading to sites suffering the same fate.
Qixinsou.com is the Yellow Pages in Shanghai (in Chinese and allegedly in English, although there is no apparent way to translate and Google translation doesn't work). It appears to also go by the domain name of YuanMengZhuYun.com, providing lookup by name, keywords, or by directory look up in these major groups:
- Industry (farming, energy production, manufacturing and product development)
- Property (real estate agents, consultants, inspectors, and home security)
- Public Records & Social Services (educational and governmental institutions, child care and other parental resources)
Social People Search in China
Social networks are good sources for finding someone in China. Renren (formerly Xiaonei) is similar to Facebook and is popular with students.