China AI Company Visit: An Executive Due-Diligence Checklist
Use a China AI company visit to test product claims, customer adoption, implementation effort, support boundaries and the evidence needed for a pilot.
A company visit is one stage of diligence. Arrive with a defined use case and ask the host to show how it works for a real operating team. Separate what delegates witness from what the host states, and identify the documents or tests needed before a pilot, purchase or partnership decision.
What to evaluate
Deployment evidence
Trace a use case from user need to live workflow, owner and measured result.
Technical architecture
Understand where data, models, infrastructure and integration responsibilities sit.
Commercial reality
Test pricing logic, implementation capacity, support boundaries and customer concentration.
Governance readiness
Inspect evaluation, access control, incident response and human accountability.
Worked evaluation exercise
The following is an illustrative assessment exercise, not a reported customer result.
For a proposed enterprise assistant, ask the host to follow a request from login through retrieval, response and escalation. Note who prepares the knowledge base, approves access and maintains content. Request anonymised examples of failures and support work. If a customer reference is offered, obtain permission and verify it through an appropriate follow-up. Record remaining gaps in a diligence list rather than treating attendance at the meeting as verification.
Questions for the operating team
- Can the team demonstrate a live production workflow rather than a prepared showcase?
- Who owns the result after the sales team leaves?
- Which assumptions fail when the system moves into another language, sector or jurisdiction?
Warning signs
- Answers that remain at feature level.
- Metrics without definitions or baselines.
- A proposed visit presented as proof of a partnership.
Planning the visit
Use these questions to scope an industry-focused China AI program. Agree which records and operating workflows can be examined before confirming meetings; host participation and access require confirmation. Our research method explains how we structure the brief and follow-up.
References and scope
These references provide policy or risk-management context. They do not independently verify a host's performance or the illustrative exercise above.