Home › Guides

Translating a Chinese police clearance certificate (无犯罪记录证明)

Updated 2026-08-08

This is the shortest document in the set and the one where a loose translation does the most damage, because the whole document is one sentence and the sentence is carefully limited.

There is no standard form

Unlike a birth certificate or a business licence, the 无犯罪记录证明 has no single national template. It is issued by a public security organ — sometimes the local police station (派出所), sometimes the county or district public security bureau (公安局), sometimes through a provincial online service — and the layout, title and wording all vary.

Titles you may see:

The third and fourth are worth noticing: they are framed as an enquiry result, not an assertion of innocence. Translate the title you have rather than the title you wish you had.

Field by field

The sentence is the document

The body is usually one sentence, and its exact scope is what a receiving authority reads. These are materially different statements:

Rendering all four as "has no criminal record" overstates three of them. That is not a stylistic choice — it makes the translation inaccurate, and the translator is certifying accuracy.

Translate the qualifiers. If the certificate says 在我辖区内, the English says "within our jurisdiction". A receiving authority that needs national coverage will then know to ask for it, which is better for the applicant than discovering the gap after a decision.

Seals

The seal is doing more work here than usual, because the document is otherwise plain paper with a few lines of text. It identifies which organ issued it and therefore how much the statement covers.

[Round red seal: XX Police Station, Public Security Bureau of XX District,
 XX Municipality]

Note whether it is a 派出所 (police station, the lowest level) or a 公安局 (public security bureau, county/district level or above). Some receiving authorities specify a minimum level, and the seal is where that is visible.

The notarial route is usually what is wanted

For use abroad, a bare police certificate on a sheet of paper is often not what the receiving authority is expecting. The standard route is a 无犯罪记录公证书 — a notarial certificate of no criminal record — issued by a Chinese notary office based on the police certificate, then apostilled.

This solves three problems at once: it packages the police certificate with a notary's attestation, it can be issued bilingually so the translation is inside the notarised document, and it is the form the apostille attaches to.

Ask the notary office for the bilingual booklet. See notarial certificates and apostilles.

Validity

Most receiving authorities treat a police certificate as valid for a limited period — commonly three or six months from issue, depending on the destination and the application type. The certificate itself usually does not state an expiry.

That has a practical consequence for translation: check the deadline before you pay. A certificate obtained and translated too early can expire before the application is decided, and the whole chain — police certificate, notarisation, apostille, translation — has to be repeated.

Mistakes that matter

Dropping the jurisdictional or temporal qualifier. Covered above; it is the main risk on this document.

Translating 无违法犯罪记录 as "no criminal record". 违法 covers administrative offences that are not crimes. The certificate covering both is a broader statement than one covering crimes only, and the difference runs the other way from what people assume — it is the stronger document.

Rendering 查询期间 as the issue date. The period searched is what determines the certificate's coverage.

Guessing at the officer's handwritten name. [Signature].

Omitting 户籍地址. The registered address is how the issuing organ established jurisdiction, which is what makes their statement meaningful.

FAQ

Who issues this for someone living overseas?

If you are a Chinese national abroad, options include applying through the public security organ where your hukou is registered, often via a relative with a power of attorney, or through the Chinese embassy or consulate in some jurisdictions. Requirements vary by province, so check with the specific bureau.

Does it cover the whole country or only my registered area?

That depends on the issuing organ and is stated in the wording. Certificates issued by a local police station are frequently limited to their jurisdiction. Where national coverage is required, this is worth resolving before submission rather than after.

How long is it valid?

The certificate rarely states a period; the receiving authority sets one, commonly three or six months. Check the destination's requirement and time the application accordingly.

Can I get it in English directly?

Not usually from the police. The bilingual notarial certificate is the route that produces an official document containing English.

Does it need an apostille?

If the receiving authority wants the document authenticated, yes — and the apostille attaches to the notarial certificate, not to the police sheet. See apostilles on Chinese documents.

Related guides

• Translating a Chinese notarial certificate (公证书)How the notarial booklet is structured, what the certificate number encodes, the standard notarial wording, and the difference between a certificate of a fact and a certificate that a copy matches the original.
• Apostilles on Chinese documents — and why they do not solve translationSince 7 November 2023 Chinese public documents get an apostille instead of consular legalisation. What the apostille certifies, what it does not, and where the English translation has to come from.
• Translating a Chinese hukou (户口本), field by fieldEvery field on the household register and the resident page, including the ones that are routinely mistranslated — 籍贯 is not birthplace, and 户别 decides what the document proves.