Originally Posted by jiejie

The only reliable way to get confirmation of delivery is by using a private service such as FedEx that keeps complete custody all the way to delivery into hands of the recipient. Yes, pricey, I know. Even worse news than you wanted to hear. For anything critical (legal documents, passport, credit card, etc.) this is the ONLY method I would recommend, except for hand delivery if you have a trusted intermediary that happens to be going to China.

Anything going by USPS gets delivered into China Post's hands, and then delivered internally in China by China Post. USPS can make all the promises and guarantees they want, but in the end, they rely on China Post to make the final hookup and carry out the tracking. If your letter is going to be delivered to a business address, then I'd put the odds as better than if delivered to a residential address. But I've learned enough over the years to not trust inbound China Post for critical stuff, nor their "tracking". Outbound seems to be better.

China Post does have an EMS service that is similar to USPS Express services and provides tracking. But from the US side, I'm not sure how they can structure the transaction so it feeds into China Post EMS instead of China Post standard. Maybe that's the $29 service listed by poster above--worth asking about. But at that rate, you're probably looking at close to FedEx pricing. If little difference, I'd go with the private carrier.