As a non-US citizen, I'd rather see discussion and/or flag waving (of either or both camps) of American politics on this forum, than not see discussion of local politics or anything even remotely related to it.

Xiefei: "if China just signed up for the apostille system"

I have understood that it isn't so much that China wouldn't want to sign it, but various obligations that other countries would put on China in order to recognize China's apostille.

Many countries more recently signed into the convention also face some bilateral exceptions, that their apostille is not recognized by individual states.

This applies in particular to countries that could be considered to still be developing their legal and regulatory systems. China is no stranger to such hurdles.

The country would take it as quite a slap on the face, if it signed to it only to find that almost every country will not recognize it's apostille anyway.

In my case, the authentication stamps generally read as follows:

"The XXX certify that YYY whose signature and seal appear under the foregoing certificate, is authorized to issue certificates of that nature".

In my understanding authentication does therefore consider neither the physical document, nor its content, but the signature or seal on it. It authenticates the authority of the issuer, or in case of multiple steps the authority of which ever agency stamped it in the previous authentication step.

Thus my point is that an authentication step would be unnecessary bureaucracy if XXX and YYY are same. It wouldn't add anything to the chain of trust.

"your country may have what's called an "Apostille" agreement with China"

No, not the case. China is not part of the Apostille convention - maybe they have bilateral agreement with some countries, perhaps DPRK or so. Not mine.

But it still looks like in your case the Dept. of State correctly refused to authenticate their own documents for you.

I mean, they could, and maybe have in past, but isn't it a bit like myself authenticating some document that I myself make up - doesn't make it any more real, in eyes of Chinese consulate.

But maybe your grief is solely with the guy who was mistaken/lied about new CRBAs being possible to authenticate by Dept. of State?

I read your longer reply, and I think I understand what you wrote. I'm not from USA, so I can only try to reflect on it with situation in my own home country,

I still don't understand why the US agency (State Dept.) that issued the certificates would need to further authenticate the certificates that they themselves issued.

In my country, which ever agency issues a certificate of this or some other kind, plays no role in further authentication. It is always the next bigger authority - and for (equivalent of) Dept. of State there is no bigger authority, other than Chinese consulate if the documents are to be used in China.

Point of Dept. of State authenticating documents that Dept. of State issued, would be basically to confirm that they are entitled to issue them - not necessary.

If I was to request such regardless, and it happened with a a failing customer service person, I might too get replied "we don't do that" like you experienced - and they would be kind of right.