📖 Guide

How to Notarize and Apostille Chinese Documents for Use Abroad

A sourced guide for people in the US who must make an official Chinese document, a birth, marriage, single-status, degree or police record, legally usable abroad: the notary-then-apostille chain, the November 2023 change, and the honest cost.

📅 Updated October 8, 2026⏱ 33 min read

Last updated: October 8, 2026 · By the PandaRoads team in China

TL;DR

A Chinese degree, official transcript, police record, business contract, or a certified copy of a civil record such as a birth or marriage certificate is not accepted as-is by an authority abroad. It has to be authenticated first, and since 7 November 2023 that means a two-step chain: a notarial certificate from a Chinese notary office (公证处), then an apostille from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs or an authorized local Foreign Affairs Office. The apostille replaced the old run to a foreign embassy for any Hague member country, which now includes the United States. A local runner can queue at the notary office, submit, pay the government fee at cost, collect the sealed certificate, carry it to the Foreign Affairs window for the apostille and courier it to you, from $129 per request or $239 per day for a multi-office chain. The honest ceiling: a notarial act that must record your own signature or sworn statement has to be done by you, in person at the notary office or at a Chinese consulate, and no representative can stand in for that.

Abstract

A sourced, buyer-oriented guide for a person living in the United States who has to make an official Chinese document usable by an authority that did not issue it, such as a foreign university registrar, a professional licensing board, an employer running a background check, an overseas court, or a bank's compliance desk. It covers what changed on 7 November 2023, the difference between an apostille and consular legalization, which Chinese documents can be apostilled and which cannot, the notarial-certificate-then-apostille chain, the office-by-office reality and weekday windows, the honest cost against flying back, and the exact point where a document stops being something you can outsource.

Key Takeaways

  • A US agency will not accept a raw Chinese document; it must be authenticated first
  • Since 7 November 2023 a Chinese public document needs one apostille, not a consular legalization run, for Hague-member use including the United States
  • The chain is two steps: a notarial certificate from a notary office, then an apostille from the MFA or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office
  • The apostille legalizes a paper you can already obtain; it does not create a record the law reserves to you
  • Any document that captures your own signature or sworn statement must be done by you, not a representative
  • Government notary and apostille fees are separate from service labor and are reimbursed at cost
  • A local service runs $129 per single-office request or $239 per day for a chain, paid through PayPal after an approved quote
  • Apostilles are issued by the MFA's Department of Consular Affairs and by authorized provincial and municipal Foreign Affairs Offices, not only in Beijing
  • An apostille does not expire, but most receiving institutions require the underlying certificate to be about six months fresh, so authenticate close to your filing date
  • A lost Chinese diploma cannot be reissued, only replaced by an equal-effect graduation certificate produced once, so insure the originals you courier

Table of Contents

What changed on 7 November 2023

For years, making a Chinese document valid in the United States meant a two-stamp gauntlet: authentication by China's own foreign-affairs authority, then a second legalization at the embassy or consulate of the country that would receive it. That embassy stamp is the step that forced a trip to Beijing or a specific consular district and added days to every packet.

On 8 March 2023 China acceded to the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, and the treaty took effect between China and the United States on 7 November 2023. The practical consequence is narrow but real: a Chinese public document bound for a Hague-member country now needs a single apostille, and the receiving country accepts that apostille in place of its own embassy's legalization stamp. The Chinese mission in Washington put the flip side plainly, announcing that from 7 November it ceased consular authentication services for documents moving between the two countries.

If you filed anything abroad before that date and are re-doing it now, the whole second leg may have quietly vanished. That is the single most useful fact in this article, and it is worth stating as a rule you can quote back to whichever agency is asking: China issues apostilles for Hague-member use, and the United States recognizes them.

Since 7 November 2023, a Chinese public document headed for the US needs one apostille from China's foreign-affairs authority, not the old two-step consular legalization, because the Convention entered into force between the two countries and Chinese consular authentication for it was discontinued.

Apostille versus consular legalization, in one plain distinction

Two routes authenticate a document for cross-border use, and which one applies depends entirely on whether the destination sits inside the Hague Convention.

An apostille is a single certificate, issued by a designated competent authority in the country that produced the document, that other member countries accept without any further stamp. In China the competent authorities are the Department of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and authorized local Foreign Affairs Offices, and those offices are the only bodies that can issue the apostille or legalize for the older route.

Consular legalization is the older chain: the issuing country's foreign-affairs authority authenticates the document, and then the destination country's embassy or consulate in that country adds its own stamp. China's own guidance keeps this route alive in one direction: documents issued by non-member countries and brought into mainland China must still be notarized and legalized by the competent authorities of that country, then legalized by a Chinese embassy or consulate there.

So the decision is a membership check, not a preference. The United States is a Hague member, so a Chinese document going to a US agency takes the apostille. A Chinese document going to a country that is not a member still rides the embassy route, and the receiving country's mission in China decides that, not you. Confirm the destination's status before paying anyone; the list of members and non-members is the whole branching point.

Destination country status Route for a Chinese document Who adds the final authentication Typical added leg
Hague Apostille member (includes the United States) Notarial certificate, then apostille China MFA or an authorized local Foreign Affairs Office None; no foreign embassy stamp
Non-member Notarial certificate, then consular legalization China foreign-affairs authority, then the destination country's embassy or consulate in China One extra embassy step, sometimes in a specific city
Already-held foreign document coming INTO China Apostille (member) or legalization via Chinese mission (non-member) The issuing country's authority, then a Chinese embassy or consulate for non-members Mirror of the above

The distinction is a membership test, not a preference: Hague-member destinations such as the United States accept a single Chinese apostille, while non-member destinations still require the older two-stamp consular legalization through their own mission in China.

Which Chinese documents can be apostilled, and which cannot

Not every piece of paper is in scope, and finding out which bucket yours sits in is the first money-saving move. The MFA's own guidance lists the categories it handles: birth, death, marriage, no criminal record, kinship, academic qualification, professional qualification, declaration, entrustment paper, power of attorney, contract, articles of association, animal and plant inspection certificates, certificate of origin and invoice, and other notarial certificates and civil or business certifications, as long as they are issued by a Chinese notary public office, an entry-exit inspection and quarantine bureau, or the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

Read that list against the packets people actually chase from the United States.

What a US agency asks for Chinese document Path to acceptance
Civil record needed in a foreign filing Birth or marriage certificate, divorce judgment, death certificate Notarize the record or its official copy, then apostille
Character or background check Certificate of no criminal record (无犯罪记录证明) Apply where eligible, collect the finished certificate, then notarize and apostille it
Education or licensing file Diploma, degree certificate, official transcript Confirm the original, then a notarized academic-qualification certificate, then apostille; CHSI online verification may already satisfy a school or employer
A document you sign yourself Power of attorney, sworn declaration, affidavit Executed as a notarial act that needs you present, or signed at a Chinese consulate abroad, then apostilled

Two honest exclusions sit just outside this. A record an office will release only to you in person cannot be notarized into existence by a representative, so the apostille has nothing to attach to. And a purely private paper with no official origin, like a hand-written note, is not a public document and does not qualify; agencies generally want a certified copy of an official record, notarized, not a raw personal file. Establish the exact paper your receiving authority wants before you spend anything on authentication, because authenticating the wrong document is the most expensive beginner mistake in this whole process.

The in-scope set is defined by issuer: a Chinese notary office, quarantine bureau or CCPIT, covering civil records such as birth and marriage, no-criminal-record certificates, academic and professional credentials, declarations, powers of attorney and business instruments. Records only the owner can obtain, and private unsigned papers, fall outside it.

The two-step chain: notarial certificate first, apostille second

The core mechanic people get wrong is treating the apostille as the whole job. It is the second step. The first is a notarial certificate, and the order is not optional.

China's foreign-affairs guidance is explicit that the documents it apostilles or legalizes are ones "issued by Chinese notary public offices," alongside quarantine and CCPIT certificates. In plain terms, the notary office (公证处) first turns your underlying record, say a degree from a university registrar or a police record from a public security bureau, into a notarial certificate, typically a certified copy plus a translation into the language the receiving country needs, sealed by the notary. Only that notarial certificate then goes to the MFA or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office to receive the apostille that a US agency will actually accept.

So the physical chain for a typical civil packet looks like this:

  1. The original official record exists somewhere: a hospital or Civil Affairs Bureau, a university registrar, a public security bureau, a court.
  2. A Chinese notary office issues a notarial certificate of it, with a translation where the receiving authority requires one.
  3. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs or an authorized local Foreign Affairs Office attaches the apostille to that notarial certificate.
  4. The apostilled set leaves China and reaches the agency that requested it.

Two rules emerge that save wasted money. Do not commission a translation, notarization, apostille or credential evaluation before you have confirmed exactly what your issuing office can produce and precisely what the receiving organization will accept; sequencing this wrong is the usual way people pay twice. And remember the apostille only legalizes a paper you can already lawfully obtain; it does not conjure an original a locked office will not hand over. Get the notarial certificate right and the apostille is routine; get the underlying paper wrong and no authentication rescues it.

The job is a strict two-step sequence, not a single stamp: a Chinese notary office first issues a notarial certificate (with translation where needed), and only then does the MFA or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office attach the apostille a US agency will accept.

What a local service can do, and the signature line it cannot cross

Buyers reading this are doing a procurement decision, not a favor, so it pays to split the work into what a person on the ground genuinely moves and the narrow line they cannot step over, because that line is where these services earn trust or lose it.

A local runner can do the legwork that a body-in-the-city exists to do: stand in the queue at a notary office or Foreign Affairs window during the weekday morning hours, submit the application and supporting documents that office accepts from a third party, pay the government or notary fee at the counter, collect the finished notarial certificate against a signed receipt, carry it to the authorized Foreign Affairs Office for the apostille, photograph the sealed set at collection, and courier it worldwide with tracking and available insurance. PandaRoads publishes this coordination at $129 per request for a single-office job and $239 per day when the chain crosses several offices, with every government, notary and courier fee itemized and reimbursed at cost, nothing charged until you approve the quote, and payment settled through PayPal.

Here is the ceiling, and it is a legal one rather than a logistical one. A notarial act that records your own signature or your own sworn statement cannot be performed by a delegate. A power of attorney, a personal declaration, or any document whose whole point is that you personally attested to something, is made before the notary with you present, or, if you are abroad, signed at a Chinese embassy or consulate. No representative can sign as you or swear in your name, and PandaRoads states the same limit directly: it will not sign for you, and it will not apply on your behalf for licenses or credentials. Where your physical presence at the notary counter is mandatory, the honest service tells you that in the 24-hour requirements check, before you spend anything.

There is also an identity step that precedes almost all of it. The office matches a record to the person it is about, so you send a clear copy of the passport or ID the underlying document was issued against, and if that passport has since been renewed, the bridge between the old number and the new one matters for a clean match.

A runner can queue, submit third-party paperwork, pay fees at cost, collect the notarial certificate, carry it to the apostille window, photograph it and courier it from $129 per request, but cannot execute a notarial act that records your own signature or sworn statement, which you do present or at a Chinese consulate.

Civil papers versus business papers: the CCPIT branch

Personal and corporate documents share the same apostille endpoint but enter through different doors, and conflating them is a common and costly error.

A civil paper, your degree, police record, contract, or a certified copy of a birth or marriage record, enters through a notary office, which issues the notarial certificate the Foreign Affairs Office then legalizes. A business or commercial paper, a contract, an invoice, a certificate of origin, or an export/compliance document, frequently enters through the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), which is listed alongside notary offices and quarantine bureaus as an issuing body whose certificates China will apostille or legalize.

The application mechanics for a business document are also stricter, because the authority is authenticating an entity, not a person. The MFA's rule for business-purpose legalization requires the original notarial or CCPIT certificate, one original authorization letter issued by the enterprise itself, and a copy of the authorized person's valid passport, and the enterprise is expected to authorize its own personnel to file the application. That is a materially higher bar than a personal affidavit, and it is why corporate authentication usually runs through the company's own staff or a properly authorized representative rather than an unrelated courier.

If your situation is corporate, the records-and-archive side of retrieving the underlying company documents, a business license, registration extracts or tax records, is a different problem from legalizing a document you already hold, and it has its own guide on how to retrieve Chinese company records and the broader business proxy page for on-the-ground representation.

Civil documents enter through a notary office and business documents through bodies such as the CCPIT, but both reach a US agency through the same Foreign Affairs apostille; the corporate route simply adds an enterprise authorization letter and the authorized person's passport copy.

Which office issues the apostille, and why it is not only Beijing

A common false stop is assuming the apostille can only be obtained in Beijing, which makes an overseas buyer think the whole thing is out of reach. China's own guidance says otherwise. The competent authorities are the Department of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing and the authorized Foreign Affairs Offices of local provincial and municipal governments, and a document may be apostilled by an authorized local office rather than being sent to the capital first.

Those authorized offices are not all equal, and the difference decides how many stops your document makes. The MFA's published name list sorts them into offices that can directly issue an apostille, offices that only accept a file and transfer it to the Department, and offices that transfer it onward to a provincial office. Which city your notarial certificate came from, and which office covers it, is the routing question, and it is exactly the kind of local-registry knowledge a runner who does this weekly carries and an overseas first-timer does not.

One office fact follows directly. The Department offers a mail-back service, but it is a domestic one: you fill out an EMS envelope at the counter and the finished set goes back to a Chinese address, not to an overseas mailbox you can prepay from abroad. That single detail is why the "just mail it to me" option quietly fails for someone in another country, and why collection and the onward international courier have to be handled by a person standing at that counter.

The in-scope note is worth restating at the issuing step: the documents these offices apostille are ones issued by Chinese notary public offices, entry-exit inspection and quarantine bureaus, and the CCPIT, and the MFA lists Chinese customs among the issuing bodies for commercial papers. An authentication request that names a document from outside those issuers will simply be turned away at the window.

The freshness clock, and the originals that cannot be reissued

Here is a timing trap that costs people a second round of fees. The apostille itself does not carry a fixed expiry; it certifies that a specific official signature and seal are genuine, not that the underlying facts are still current. What does run out is the freshness the receiving institution demands. Many authorities will only accept a supporting certificate issued within the last several months, and Chinese notarial declarations follow the same clock, with a declaration notarization generally valid for about six months. Authenticate close to the date you actually file, not months ahead, or you may be doing the whole chain twice.

The second trap is irreversibility, and it is the reason a document is worth insuring on the way out. A Chinese diploma and degree certificate are one-time originals; the Ministry of Education's rule is that a lost or damaged graduation or degree certificate cannot be reissued, the school instead verifies the record and issues a graduation certificate in its place, which carries equal legal effect and can normally be produced only once. If the paper you are authenticating is that irreplaceable original, a flattened seal, a lamination over an embossed stamp, or a parcel that goes missing is not an inconvenience, it is a permanent loss. That is the case for an insured, tracked, photographed courier over anything cheaper.

A third detail to settle before you pay is the language. The notarial certificate usually bundles a certified translation into a target language, and the apostille then attaches to that certificate. Confirm the exact target language the receiving institution requires, not merely "English", because some will reject a translation into the wrong variety or one not carried on the notarial certificate itself, and a re-translation means restarting the chain.

Fly back, mail it yourself, or hire: the honest math

Once you know the chain and where your signature is unavoidable, the rest is a cost decision, and it deserves numbers rather than adjectives. The travel range below is the service's own published round-trip estimate, and the task figures are its published prices; government notary and apostille fees are separate and billed at cost.

Route Upfront cost What you still control Where it breaks
Fly to China to do it yourself A single business round trip typically runs $2,510 to $9,250 for flights, hotel, meals and a week of calendar Every queue, window and holiday closure in person An office that says come back Thursday costs you a return flight
Mail originals yourself Postage and courier risk only Chasing an office that will not correspond with an overseas individual Most offices will not accept or return an international mail request from you
Hire a runner, single office $129 per request, government and notary fees reimbursed at cost Approving an itemized quote and sending your ID copy A step that legally requires your presence still requires you
Hire a runner, multi-office chain $239 per day, billed from departure, for a notarize-then-apostille run across two or three offices The order the offices must be visited in Cross-city legs are itemized and confirmed before you approve

The pattern that matters is not the headline number, it is the shape. A single notary-plus-apostille job sits at the low end, $129 plus a government fee that runs at roughly RMB 50 per civil document at the foreign-affairs step and about four working days regular, two express. A real multi-document packet, a degree plus a transcript plus a police certificate plus notarized translations plus an apostille on the whole set, is several offices and several fees in sequence, which is exactly the case the service prices as a $239 multi-office day with every fee itemized on top. Nothing is hidden in a percentage; the number you approve on the itemized quote is the number you pay, settled through PayPal after approval.

Set against a published round trip of $2,510 to $9,250, a single notarize-and-apostille request costs $129 plus fees at cost, a chained multi-office run is $239 per day, and the apostille step itself is roughly RMB 50 per civil document on a four-working-day regular clock.

The office reality: weekday morning windows and holiday closures

The reason a body already in the city changes the math is not intelligence, it is hours. These are government and institutional counters on narrow weekday schedules, not business-hours desks, and the shape of that calendar is what quietly turns a simple errand into a week when you are doing it from a twelve-hour time difference.

The MFA's Department of Consular Affairs keeps a reception window of 8:30 to 11:00 AM, Monday to Friday, and it is closed on Chinese public holidays, from its office in Chaoyang, Beijing. The apostille or legalization step also has its own collection-slip rule: you are handed a slip and bring it back on pickup day. Authorized local Foreign Affairs Offices mirror the pattern regionally, which is precisely why a runner who can hit the 8:30 window on Tuesday and return Thursday when an office says come back Thursday absorbs friction that would otherwise cost you a return flight. A missing seal, a form an office wants re-typed, or a document that has to be checked against a file in another building can each force a second visit, and a second visit from the United States is a plane ticket.

None of this is a scare tactic. It is the concrete texture of why these errands are worth buying as a service and pricing on the task quote page rather than attempting as an overseas DIY, and why a per-request flat fee that has already accounted for the weekday windows is genuinely lower risk than an open-ended flight you cannot refund to a government calendar.

The authenticating offices run a weekday morning window of roughly 8:30 to 11:00 AM and close on Chinese public holidays, with a collection-slip pickup rule, which is exactly the calendar friction a local runner absorbs so you do not buy a return flight to discover it.

A notarization-and-legalization order from start to finish

Seeing the whole thing as a sequence you can picture yourself in is what turns this from a scary bureaucratic maze into a checklist with defined handoffs. Here is a legitimate order, start to finish.

  1. Name the exact paper and the exact receiving authority. A foreign university, a state court, a licensing board and an employer each want a different document, and the requirement text drives everything downstream.
  2. The service checks the issuing office's rule and replies within 24 hours with what the office accepts from a third party and whether the step legally needs you present. This is where an honest "you must sign this one yourself" surfaces before money moves.
  3. You receive an itemized quote and approve it; government and notary fees are prepaid and settled item by item against receipts, and nothing is charged until you approve the number.
  4. You send a clear copy of the passport or ID the record was issued against, and where a document is a notarial act of your own signature, you execute it present at the notary office or at a Chinese consulate abroad.
  5. The notary office issues the notarial certificate and any translation; the appointment is booked to the weekday window and the certificate is collected against a signed receipt and photographed.
  6. The set is carried to the MFA or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office and the apostille is attached, on roughly a four-working-day regular clock, two express.
  7. The sealed set is packed so seals are not flattened or laminated over, and couriered worldwide with tracking, with insurance available for originals that cannot be reissued.

The two beats that carry all the value are a physical body who can stand in the morning window and sign the release, and a tracked, photographed, receipted chain that converts "I hope they accepted the mail" into "here is the receipt and here is where your parcel is right now." Certified and apostilled originals should travel flat and never be laminated over a raised or embossed seal, because a flattened seal can be rejected by the very authority that asked for it.

A legitimate order runs: name the paper and authority, a 24-hour requirements and presence check, an approved itemized quote, your passport copy plus any in-person notarial act, the notary certificate with a photographed signed receipt, the apostille on a four-working-day clock, then a flat-packed tracked courier with optional insurance.

Frequently asked questions

Do I still need an embassy stamp to use a Chinese document in the USA? No, for most purposes. Since the Hague Apostille Convention entered into force between China and the United States on 7 November 2023, a Chinese public document needs an apostille from China's foreign-affairs authority, and Chinese consular authentication for the two countries was discontinued.

What is the difference between an apostille and notarization in China? Notarization is the first step: a Chinese notary office issues a notarial certificate of your record, usually with a translation. The apostille is the second step: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office certifies that notarial certificate so a Hague-member country accepts it without its own embassy stamp.

Can I apostille a Chinese degree, transcript or police record for use abroad? Yes, and that is the most common request. The record is notarized into a notarial certificate and then apostilled by China's competent authority, which the MFA lists as handling academic, professional and no-criminal-record documents for international use. Confirm the exact document and target language the receiving institution wants before ordering translations or apostilles.

Can someone get a Chinese document notarized for me without I fly back? Often yes for the collection and courier leg, through the weekday window and the signed-receipt chain. The exception is any document whose point is your own signature or sworn statement, such as a power of attorney or personal declaration, which you execute present or at a Chinese consulate.

How long does the apostille take and what does it cost at the counter? The MFA apostille step is about four working days regular and two express, at roughly RMB 50 per civil document, plus the notary office's own fee, all reimbursed at cost. Count the issuing office's release time and the courier leg on top.

Do I need a Chinese phone number or WeChat Pay to pay these government fees from abroad? No. A local runner pays the notary and foreign-affairs fees at the counter from a domestic account, and you settle the itemized service quote with them through PayPal after approval; a foreign card inside Alipay or WeChat Pay is capped low in any case.

Do I have to send my document to Beijing for the apostille? No. Alongside the MFA's Department of Consular Affairs, authorized provincial and municipal Foreign Affairs Offices can issue or route the apostille near where the notarial certificate was made, though only some issue it directly and others transfer the file onward.

Does an apostille expire? The apostille itself has no fixed expiry, but it does not freeze the underlying record's freshness. Many receiving institutions want the certificate to have been issued within roughly the last six months, so time the notarize-and-apostille chain to your filing date rather than doing it months early.

What if the country receiving my document is not in the Hague Convention? Then the older consular legalization still applies. China's guidance keeps that route for non-member countries, so the document goes through China's foreign-affairs authority and then the destination country's embassy or consulate in China.

Can an apostille force an office to release a record it says only I can get? No. An apostille legalizes a paper you can already obtain; it cannot create an original a holder-only office will not release, and a sworn or holder-only record stays yours to produce or authorize.

The bottom line

The gap between a Chinese document and a US agency that accepts it is closed by a two-step chain, not a single stamp: a notarial certificate from a notary office, then an apostille from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or an authorized Foreign Affairs Office. Since 7 November 2023 that apostille replaced the embassy legalization run for Hague-member destinations including the United States, which is the change that quietly deleted a whole leg of the old process.

Model it in one breath. Confirm the exact paper your receiving authority wants and whether it is even in the apostille set, because a CHSI report or a digital verification may end the need before any paper moves. If it is a real physical document, a single notarize-and-apostille request runs $129 plus government and notary fees reimbursed at cost, a chained multi-office run is $239 per day, and the apostille itself is about RMB 50 per civil document on a four-working-day clock, all approved as an itemized quote and settled through PayPal. And if the paper turns out to be one that records your own signature or a holder-only record, the honest promise is that you hear it before a dollar of effort is spent.

That is the whole pitch, and it is a modest one. The China document collection service page is where a specific paper becomes a fixed quote: say what you need authenticated and where it is headed, and see the itemized number first. Most people who thought they needed a plane ticket find they needed an afternoon, a notary window and a tracking number instead.

References

  1. Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in San Francisco. (2023, October 24). Notice on the Abolition of Consular Authentication Services by the Chinese Embassy and Consulates-General in the U.S. After China's Accession to the 1961 Hague Convention. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. https://sanfrancisco.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/lsfw/lszj/apostille/202310/t20231025_11167647.htm
  2. State Council of the People's Republic of China (source: cs.mfa.gov.cn). (2024, August 13). Legalisation of Documents/Apostille. Government of China, English portal. https://english.www.gov.cn/services/visitchina/202408/13/content_WS66bb1869c6d0868f4e8e9e2a.html
  3. Consular Services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. (2024, September 4). Consular legalisation/apostillisation in China. 中国领事服务网. https://cs.mfa.gov.cn/wgrlh/lsrz/lsrzjjs/
  4. Exit-Entry Administration of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security. (2024, August 13). How can foreign nationals obtain a Certificate of No Criminal Record? Shanghai Government Portal. https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-FAQs-LivinginShanghai/20240813/2e02ae19a31340d5a486a2bd31616eae.html
  5. China Higher Education Student and Academic Information (CHSI / Xuexin). (n.d.). Official portal for higher-education student and academic credentials verification. CHSI. https://www.chsi.com.cn/
  6. Global Attest. (2026, September 5). How to get a Chinese university transcript after graduation. Global Attest. https://globalattest.com/get-chinese-university-transcript-after-graduation.html
  7. China Briefing. (2023, July 24). WeChat enables foreigners to pay with overseas cards in China. China Briefing. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wechat-enables-foreigners-to-pay-with-overseas-cards-in-china/
  8. PandaRoads. (2026). China document collection: Pick up & ship worldwide [Service page]. PandaRoads. https://pandaroads.com/china-document-collection.html
  9. General Office of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. (2014, May 6). 教育部办公厅关于规范高等学校学历证书有关事项的通知 (Notice on Standardizing Academic Certificate Matters for Higher-Education Institutions). Ministry of Education. http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A15/s3263/201405/t20140506_169181.html
  10. Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States. (2025, October 27). 申办公证须知（2025年10月更新） [Notice on Applying for Notarization]. Consular Services. https://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/chn/lsfw/zj/gz/202305/t20230519_11079794.htm

Reviewed and updated: October 4, 2026. Author: our editorial team. For tailored guidance, contact our team.