Let's go into depth about the police checks that a few Chinese provinces/auto regions have introduced, how cautions recorded on such checks will affect you, which kind of convictions may be spent, and which may never be. I am led to believe that for US citizens, none of their convictions can ever be spent.

In the dim and distant, a UK citizen who confided in me, had got an enhanced disclosure police report that specified a caution against his name for some kind of offence involving young girls in Scotland. I think a caution in terms of fondling, groping, etc will be sufficient to prevent a person teaching, an occupation that puts him in daily contact with young people. But maybe I'm wrong. Instead of presenting said report to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's Provincial Education Bureau, he presented them with a solicitor's letter, from his solicitor who dealt with his property transactions and his will, etc. Not a criminal lawyer. The report said that he was a person of good character. T'was accepted! Subsequently, despite being employed as a foreign teacher at a public university, he became a toucher of his girl students. His favourite activity was touching their buttocks! Everything was covered over by the university, and he returned to Blighty with his 'good' name intact.

Unlike him, I was convicted of a civil offence, in Blighty, but now a criminal offence, namely breaking the 'Wireless Telegraphy Act' of 1949 by radio transmitting without a licence. Latterly, I discovered it had become spent at some time or other, I discoverd this after I first came to China, but I don't know when my conviction became spent. I wonder if cautions of the kind above that don't progress to the stage of criminal prosecutions can ever become spent.