We receive countless enquiries from people travelling to China to teach English or work in some or other capacity. China is a large country and has representation in South Africa in Pretoria and Cape Town. Before becoming a member of the Hague Convention, China did not accept the apostil stamp as a means of document legalisation and only accepted attested documents for official use. But since joining the Apostil Convention, China accepts apostilled documents and no longer requires you to submit an attested document, which makes the process of document legalisation much shorter than it used to be.
What is Chinese Embassy attestation?
To explain attestation, one should understand two other terms used in the legalisation of documents: authentication and apostille. Read more about the difference between the three terms here.
Countries can attest to the validity of documents that have been authenticated or apostilled by the host country’s international department or high court. Thus, in South Africa, a Chinese Embassy can attest your police clearance that has been authenticated at DIRCO, or China can attest your qualification that was authenticated at SAQA and DIRCO, but not the original document alone.
The words used are important. Documents cannot be apostilled for China, since China is not part of the Apostille Convention, in which member countries “trust” documents between each other that have been apostilled.
Chinese Embassy attestation is what is done to your documents within the Chinese Embassy. As mentioned, before the documents can be attested, they have to be authenticated in South Africa first.
Read more on attestation here: General information on our attestation service
Authentication
To authenticate documents, we complete one of the following procedures. Most of the documents requested daily to be attested are one of those in the table.
| DocumentEmbassy or liaison office | ||
| Police clearance certificate | R875 | |
| TEFL qualification (SA) | R950 + R875 | |
| TEFL qualification (Foreign) | R950 + R875 | |
| Degree (SA) | R2,250 | |
| Degree (Foreign) | R950 + R875 | |
| Matric certificate (SA) | R2,100 | |
| Medical certificate | R1,950 | |
| Birth/marriage certificate | R875 | |
| Most other documents (local or foreign) | R950 + R875 |
(See our Pricing page to be sure as the above pricing may be outdated.)
The attestation process
To attest documents, once authenticated as above in the table, they are taken to the Chinese Embassy in person. We naturally submit them on your behalf and collect them as well. The process is not that simple and requires a number of documents to be prepared. Travel to the embassy is also necessary, although there are embassies in a few South African cities.
Having the Chinese Embassy attestation form and Chinese Embassy medical form will not normally be enough. Following up with the embassy is also difficult as the right numbers are not published online and the right people are not listed either.
The Chinese Embassy will stamp the documentation and put a sticker on a further page which is appended. Chinese Embassy attestation for South African documents is critical to obtaining a job as a TEFL teacher in China and all the employment agencies and schools are aware of it. Sometimes they will refer to authentication in place of attestation, but they are not the same thing, as mentioned above.
Pricing for Chinese Embassy Attestation
Our pricing for Chinese Embassy attestation is mentioned here: Pricing of services. Usually it is R500 per document, but please check the current pricing here. The Chinese Embassy typically charges no fee to attest, but for an expedited service it costs R300 per document, which we bill clients for and pay across on the day of submission.
That’s it! For more questions and further information, contact us today.