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China IP Geo Down to the District: Free Lookup with GB/T 2260 admin_code

#api #geolocation #china #security

Most free IP geolocation APIs stop at city. If you build products for Chinese users — signup fraud checks, content localization, logistics routing, or just honest logging — city-level is often too coarse. Beijing alone is enormous, and a label that only says "Shanghai" does not tell you which district the address sits in.

IP99 returns district-level location for Chinese IPs, plus the six-digit GB/T 2260 admin_code, in the same free no-key call you already use for risk signals. One request, geo and risk together.

One curl, risk + geo together 

curl https://ip99.com/v1/ip/36.112.24.1
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A live response (re-fetched 2026-10-17, Asia/Shanghai) looks like this in spirit:

{
  "ip": "36.112.24.1",
  "evidence_state": "none",
  "geo": {
    "country": "CN",
    "region": "Beijing",
    "city": "Beijing",
    "district": "Haidian",
    "admin_code": "110108",
    "subdivision": "CN-BJ",
    "tz": "Asia/Shanghai"
  },
  "network": { "asn": 4847, "usage_type": "GTW" },
  "risk": { "score": 0, "level": "none", "signals": [] }
}
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Field notes that matter in production:

  • district: present for many Chinese addresses; absent outside China, and sometimes missing for coarse city-level ranges.
  • admin_code: six-digit GB/T 2260 code (110108 = Haidian District, Beijing). Useful when your CRM, compliance, or logistics tables already key off that national standard.
  • subdivision: ISO 3166-2 when available (CN-BJ).
  • Worldwide city still works for non-CN ranges (try 8.8.8.8 → Mountain View, California — no district / admin_code).

To look up the caller's own egress, omit the IP:

curl https://ip99.com/v1/ip
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A second live example: district + active risk

District alone is not a verdict. Pair it with the risk block in the same JSON. Here is another live call from the same day:

curl https://ip99.com/v1/ip/27.22.66.200
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Shape (trimmed):

{
  "ip": "27.22.66.200",
  "evidence_state": "active",
  "geo": {
    "country": "CN",
    "region": "Hubei",
    "city": "Xiangyang",
    "district": "Nanzhang",
    "admin_code": "420624",
    "subdivision": "CN-HB",
    "tz": "Asia/Shanghai"
  },
  "network": { "asn": 4134, "usage_type": "DYN" },
  "risk": {
    "score": 61,
    "level": "medium",
    "signals": ["dialup_pool", "hijacked_proxy", "proxy"]
  }
}
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Same free endpoint: you get Hubei / Xiangyang / Nanzhang plus admin_code 420624, and you also see that this range currently carries dial-up-pool and proxy evidence. A score of 0 is not "safe" — it means no current verifiable evidence (evidence_state can be active, stale, or none). Do not build a hard allowlist on geo alone.

Not every Chinese address returns a district. Some resolve only to city with a city-level admin code. Example (live 2026-10-17): 114.114.114.114 → Nanjing, Jiangsu, admin_code 320100, no district field. Treat missing keys as "not in the database," not as zero.

Why district beats city for China-facing apps

City labels collapse districts that behave differently for fraud and ops:

  • A shared hosting or gateway range in one district is not the same as a residential dial-up pool in another.
  • Content, support, or courier routing often needs district, not just "Beijing".
  • If you store only city, you throw away a free signal that maps cleanly to national admin tables via admin_code.

Typical uses that benefit from the join:

  • Signup and login enrichment: store admin_code next to the session so later reviews can filter by district without re-parsing free-text city names.
  • Soft localization: pick language, currency, or support queue by province/district — not by claiming "this person is standing at these coordinates."
  • Incident review: when a chargeback or abuse ticket lands, district + ASN + usage_type is a better starting point than a bare city string.

Honest limits (so you do not over-trust geo)

IP geolocation describes a network range, not a person's phone GPS. Confidence falls as you go finer: country is usually strong; region is often good; city is statistical; district (China-only on IP99) is still an estimate for the range.

Common reasons a city or district looks "wrong":

  • The traffic exited through a VPN or proxy (you see the exit, not the user).
  • Mobile CGNAT shares one public address across a wide area.
  • Enterprise, IDC, or CDN ranges sit where the provider parks gear, not where end users live.
  • Registration data for a prefix can lag how the prefix is actually used.

A practical triage order: check proxy / VPN signals first, compare timezone, look at usage_type (for example MOB or GTW are already coarse by nature), then treat the geo as an estimate. Use city or district to choose language, currency, or jurisdiction — not to assert that a specific person is at a specific street.

IP99 does not advertise Tor detection. Do not expect a Tor signal in this response.

What the free API does not return

  • ISP display names (the website lookup shows them; the API sticks to ASN + usage_type).
  • A permanent "bad IP" label. Evidence ages out on purpose so yesterday's dial-up exit does not permanently brand tomorrow's home user.
  • Guarantees that every Chinese range has a district. Some stop at city-level admin_code.

Quotas without a key: 500 lookups/day per public egress IP. Free signed-in account: 5,000/day. Full field dictionary, errors, and OpenAPI: ip99.com/api (machine-readable at https://ip99.com/openapi.json).

Soft next steps

  • English product home: ip99.com
  • Geo ranges by country: ip99.com/en/geo/
  • Agents: MCP tool ip_risk_lookup at https://ip99.com/mcp

One line to keep:

curl https://ip99.com/v1/ip/36.112.24.1
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If you need China down to the district — and a GB/T code you can join on — you do not need a second vendor just for geo.

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