A mining group that invests in mines and builds them

A group can't be a counterparty. One named company will be — and every other entity listed above is a separate legal person with no obligation to you until the contract creates one. Which of our credentials carry legal weight outside China, and which are domestic only, is set out on qualifications. This is the part no certificate answers, and it is worth four questions in your first email rather than in contract review three months later.

• Put an entity against every block of scope, then make one of them carry all of it. Ask for design, manufacture, site works and export to be named with the performing company beside each, and for a clause keeping the contracting entity liable for the whole scope regardless of which affiliate performs it. Without that clause, a slippage in one shop turns into an argument about whose slippage it was, and you are not a party to the contract where the answer lives.
• Ask for security that outlives the argument. A parent company guarantee from the group holding company, or a bank performance bond, is what converts an affiliate's failure into your counterparty's problem. Check two things on the instrument: that it covers the same scope as the contract, and that it runs at least as long as the defects liability period. Security drafted narrower or shorter than the works is common and easy to miss at signature.
• Settle who owns the warranty before anything ships. The company that built a machine is usually the one issuing its warranty, and that is rarely the company signing your project contract. Either the contracting entity accepts warranty liability in its own name, or the manufacturer's warranty is assigned to you in writing and the manufacturer countersigns. Name the entity that will actually ship spare parts too — export frequently sits with a different company again, and a warranty you can't get parts against is a piece of paper. Equipment manufacturing sets out which base builds what.
• Send variations, notices and claims to one address. State which entity may issue and price a variation order, and that instructions from any other affiliate do not bind either side. If equipment supply sits on a separate export contract, check that both contracts carry the same governing law, the same dispute forum, and back-to-back notice periods for claims. Two contracts with two forums is how one delay becomes two arguments, in two places, at your cost.

Ask these before the quotation rather than during contract review. A contractor that has done international work will answer in a paragraph. The answers also move the price, which is the point — an entity that carries affiliate risk prices that risk in, and you would rather see it priced than discover it later.