The Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents will enter into force in China on November 7, 2023

Foreign personnel, foreign companies, and foreign-related businesses inevitably involve foreign public documents, such as identity certificates, subject qualification certificates, credit certificates, ownership certificates, etc.

For a long time, any foreign public document which shall be submitted to the administrative or judicial departments in China, shall go through notarization and authentication procedures. Specifically, the document shall be notarized in the country where it is produced (hereinafter referred to as the “host country) , then be authenticated by the ministry of foreign affairs of the host country or the consulate assigned by the ministry of foreign affairs, and finally be authenticated by the Chinese embassy in the host country. This is a “notarization + double authentication” procedure. For the public document produces in China which have to be used overseas, the same procedure shall be applied. This procedure is complicated, time and money consuming.

On March 8, 2023, China deposited the Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (hereinafter referred to as the “Convention”), which will enter into force in China on November 7, 2023.

According to the Convention, in the future, the current procedure will be simplified to completing notarization in the host country, and obtaining a certificate (named as the “Apostille”) issued by the competent authority of the host country. This is a “notarization + certification” procedure, that is, the step of the authentication by the Chinese embassy in the host country will be deleted. As for the certificate, it is actually a simplified version for the authentication by the ministry of foreign affairs of the host country or the consulate assigned by the ministry of foreign affairs.

It is worth noting that the objects of this Convention are limited to “public documents”. According to Article 1 of the Convention, the “public documents” include the following four types: (1) documents emanating from an authority or an official connected with the courts or tribunals of the State, including those emanating from a public prosecutor, a clerk of a court or a process-server; (2) administrative documents;(3) notarial acts; and (4) official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures. In other words, the Convention could not be applied to the rest documents which produced overseas, such as the evidence (e.g., a contract) used for a litigation in China.