Every Taiwanese company receives an eight‑digit Unified Business Number. Local reporters shorten it to UBN. Inside the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ GCIS system, most of the corporate trail attaches to that number.
Anyone used to UK or Panama filings spots the contrast fast. GCIS grew out of a domestic administrative system and it shows. Field labels follow ministry terminology. Some entries appear only in Mandarin even when the company trades overseas. Tracing supply chains often begins with a dull routine: copy a UBN, paste it into another government portal, confirm the same company again.
OpenRegistry exposes GCIS through MCP. An assistant can query the register directly. The reply preserves the original registry structure under jurisdiction_data. That detail matters during verification work. Aggregated datasets sometimes reshape fields or smooth awkward translations. Here you see the ministry’s wording exactly as stored.
A typical GCIS company profile carries several fields reporters return to again and again.
Business_Accounting_NO is the UBN itself. Eight digits. This number links tax records, customs registrations, and procurement disclosures across Taiwan’s public datasets. Once the company identity is confirmed, investigators usually pivot through this identifier rather than the name.
Company_Name stores the legal Chinese name. Some profiles also include Company_Name_English, though the register does not require it. Export‑focused manufacturers often circulate several Romanised spellings in trade catalogues or distributor listings. The Chinese legal name stays consistent, so matching records usually starts there.
Responsible_Person_Name identifies the legal representative. Taiwan’s company law concentrates responsibility in this role rather than publishing a detailed board structure. Patterns appear quickly. The same responsible person turning up across several entities can point to a family business group, or occasionally a nominee acting on behalf of others.
Capital_Stock_Amount records the registered capital. The figure can look oddly small beside revenue estimates reported elsewhere. Taiwanese firms often keep statutory capital low while financing operations through affiliated entities. That structure shows up regularly in manufacturing groups.
Company_Location lists the registered address. Industrial districts around Taichung, Hsinchu, and New Taipei appear repeatedly when mapping electronics suppliers. Sometimes dozens of exporters share the same building. Not unusual.
Company_Status indicates whether the entity is active, dissolved, or suspended. GCIS updates tend to appear quickly because the information flows straight from Ministry of Economic Affairs filings rather than a secondary database.
The raw payload may also contain approval dates and business scope descriptions written entirely in Chinese. OpenRegistry passes these fields through untouched within jurisdiction_data. For fact‑checking, that matters. When editors want the exact phrasing from the government system, the raw text avoids translation drift.
Some details investigators expect simply are not public. Taiwan does not operate an open beneficial ownership register. Shareholder disclosure varies by company type and often stops at corporate entities rather than natural persons. Finding the individual behind a shareholder normally means checking separate filings or court material. That gap becomes relevant in sanctions work or cross‑border asset tracing.
Language adds another constraint. GCIS responses frequently contain Mandarin strings even if the search query used Latin characters. Any workflow that processes the registry needs proper UTF‑8 handling. Systems expecting English field values can treat perfectly valid responses as incomplete.
A basic search through OpenRegistry looks like this:
search_companies
{
"jurisdiction": "TW",
"query": "TSMC"
}
This call queries the GCIS name index. Results usually return the Chinese legal name together with the UBN. That number becomes the next step.
get_company_profile
{
"jurisdiction": "TW",
"company_number": "22099131"
}
The response includes structured fields plus the untouched GCIS payload inside jurisdiction_data. From there an assistant can call other tools where the registry exposes additional endpoints. An officer lookup, for instance:
get_officers
{
"jurisdiction": "TW",
"company_number": "22099131"
}
Coverage follows the upstream registry. If GCIS does not publish a document or shareholder list, the MCP layer does not invent one.
For newsroom work the practical gain is reproducibility. Another reporter can run the same query and retrieve the same fields because the request hits the live GCIS service rather than a mirrored dataset. Editors tend to ask where a fact came from. Showing the registry response answers that question quickly.
Cross‑border reporting is where this approach earns its keep. Taiwanese companies appear throughout semiconductor supply chains and export‑control investigations. They also surface inside networks linked to mainland manufacturing groups. When a Hong Kong trading firm references a Taiwanese subsidiary, a GCIS lookup often confirms the responsible person and the registered address within seconds.
The same MCP interface reaches other jurisdictions too. A workflow that begins with Taiwan can pivot to Hong Kong, the UK, or the Cayman Islands without rewriting the query layer. Reporters mapping corporate links across borders usually care about that consistency.
The public MCP endpoint for OpenRegistry sits at https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp if you want to run GCIS queries yourself and inspect the registry payload.
