"ALL APPLICANTS OVER 16 YEARS OF AGE MUST PROVIDE: A police certificate issued within the last 12 months (with a certified English translation) from your country/territory of nationality that covers the ENTIRE TIME you have lived in that country since age 16. Chinese local notary offices are the only authority that can issue Chinese Police Certificates."
Page 3 at:
travel.state.gov/[...]
All other instructions for police certificates say "with a certified
English translation."
Process of notarization and legalization of documents to be used in another country is almost always the same in every country (save cases when the two countries recognize simplified apostille process - China is not signed to that).
A locally notarized (that's the first step) document is double-legalized (two more steps) first in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the country where the document originates from, and then in the consulate of the country where it is intended to be used in.
In your case:
First you notarize the original document in the locale where it is originally produced, I guess in Kunming. I remember the office that can do that is in Baoshan Lu close to Nanping Jie. Here they stamp it to verify that it was really granted by the real police department.
Then you get it legalized in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. There they stamp a certificate that the previous step (notarization) was done by approved authority.
Finally you take it to US Consulate in China (probably Beijing, since they are in same area with China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs), where they make a second legalization stamp indicating that the stamp from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is genuine.
Now you have a chain of trust that makes the document usable in USA.
A shortcut (or pitfall) which may be possible, is that after the local notarization you could go to China's Foreign Affairs Office in Kunming, and they could mail the document to Beijing to be handled.
They provide (or did provide anyway) service that gets the stamps in Beijing done at both Mininstry of Foreign Affairs, and a chosen foreign consulate, and then sent it back to Kunming where you could pick it up.
However as pitfalls go, we tried this a few years ago, and the document got lost on the way. The Chinese claim it was delivered to my home country's consulate, and my consulate claims that if it was, the delivery person would have been given a receipt, which was nowhere to be found. In the end I had to fly there myself to do it.
On the topic of English translation, you may have have to do the whole notarization and two-level legalization separately for the translation - so the final users of the document can trust that the translation was done by a proper entity.
That starts with finding a certified translator, which the local notary office will recognize, and then to Beijing...
Thanks JanJal.
I will be flying to Kunming to get the police certificate ( issued in Kunming a few months ago) notarised. The next step, which is getting it
stamped at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is a bit confusing to me, I didnt know where to do it till your message came through. I was planning to bring the cert to US Embassy in Beijing to notarise anyway, so I will drop by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs China ( Beijing) before I do so. Do you know how long they will take to process the vert at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the US embassy? Thank you so much for your info
exhausted: ""Do you know how long they will take to process the vert at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs"
Processing times, fees, and other official information seems to be here:
Thank you!!!
