Specifically the "consulate of choice" (to apply work visa from) must be filled on internet form when inputting data for application of "work permit application notice".

This chosen consulate does not appear on the "NOTIFICATION LETTER OF FOREIGNER’S WORK PERMIT" that you must attach to work visa application, but the information is stored in system and accessible to the visa authorities via the barcode in the paper.

This note is mainly for those registering their own companies (and subsequently getting to fill these applications online by themselves). I recently did this myself.

@tigertiger: "I could be wrong, but I think the whole authentication process only needs to be done once."

For the purpose of work permit application, the no-criminal certificate is only valid for 6 months or so, so if you apply for another work permit later, you need to get a new original certificate and repeat the whole legalization process for it. Even if only the printout date changes.

Education certificates do not have similar validity period. I guess they assume degrees can never be taken away from someone (which is of course not true, but quite rare).

The process does not seem any different or more difficult for UK nationals than it is for others (save perhaps citizens of greater China outside the mainland jurisdiction).

@debased: "I'm using Hague Apostille (A.K.A The Apostille Service)"

Be careful with that though - "Hague Apostille" generally refers to an international convention (Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents), which aims to reduce bureaucracy related to accepting documents in other countries.

In practise, if your document is certified with such "apostille" in the country of its origins, it would be accepted in all countries that have signed into this concention.

But China is not signed to this. Apostille stamp is not sufficient for documents to be used in China - they need to be specifically legalized by Chinese consulate abroad, and Chinese consulate first requires them to be legalized by the foreign ministry of the country.

In your case, the service provider may of course do the full consulate legalization rather than just apostille.

Imagine state of being (not necessarily of humans) where each individual is constantly fully aware of everything that happens with and/or in vicinity of every other individual.

A collective hive-mind in the sense of Borg or whatever your favourite imaginary aliens are.

Are we in rudimentary steps toward that direction?

Is that direction wrong to begin with, or are we just so limited beings (technologically and biologically), that we cannot efficiently enough filter the information relevant to each individual from all that noise?

@cloudtrapezer

In my opinion, 163% annual rise from 2015 to 2016 is actually quite big, an probably any reference to "world gone by" in this context refers to years before just 2016, not sometime last decade or last century.

While the absolute numbers are still probably trailing far behind USA or other countries, also in this context China's annual "growth rate" seems to be >150%, which I suspect is competitive to any developed country.

Of course given the Chinese system, it should be understandable (even if not agreeable), why they employ more scrutiny and perhaps have refused more applications in the past.