In a former entry I gave a quick look at how China's history of misogyny, its ethnocentric superiority complex and the inherently corrupt nature of what passes for law here have given rise to a culture where being held as an enslaved concubine is commonplace, especially for foreign women unfortunate enough to live near the self-anointed "Central Nation's" border. Certainly this is the most infamous face of China's 21st century slave trade. However, it's far from the only form of slavery that China practices today. The practice of luring foreign workers in to fill jobs the Chinese cannot adequately perform and then holding those workers captive (by means of withholding their passports or confiscating such a large portion of their wage that they cannot afford a ticket out, for example) is perhaps the most common form of forced labor in China today.
Certainly it's one that was of interest to me, given my present situation.
In this article I will examine two industries where it is commonplace for foreigners to enter China for work, usually in full compliance with China's "laws," if you want to call them that, and find themselves trapped: teaching (especially ESL teaching), and domestic service.
And You Thought America Had Teacher Pay Problems
"Come teach English in China! Competitive Salary! No Chinese language skills necessary!"
These ads are all over the internet. They make China sound like some kind of golden land of opportunity where you can make a comfortable living while being on a perpetual vacation; a never-ending life of adventure where you are surrounded by breathtaking vistas and ancient temples and palaces every weekend, and to add icing to the cake, you're doing a good deed by helping those cute little kids.
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure posters throughout Ireland in the 16th - 18th centuries made American sugar plantations sound great too.
A 15 second Google search for "teacher scams in China" or " 'work in China' scams" is all you need to do to know that coming here is, at best, a risky endeavor. If one does their proverbial homework then the danger of becoming the next "trapped in China" horror-story diminishes greatly, but the sad reality is that the risk of becoming stuck in a situation where you are being exploited and can't go to the police for fear of being arrested while the ones who victimized you walk free... well, it never completely goes away. As they say after all, "T.I.C." (This Is China)
Probably the most common trap is the "no qualifications necessary" recruiter (Baghan). These recruiters are paid by schools to bring teachers from outside of China to fulfill the school's "we need a foreign face at the front of the class" requirement. In most schools, this is the only criteria for a foreign teacher (since public schools in China have foreign English teachers almost entirely as entertainment for the students rather than actual teaching). Also, the contract between the schools and these recruiters says that the school is not responsible for the teacher's visa. The agency tells the school "we'll take care of that." Once this is done, the recruiter's task is to lure a foreigner to China (by fair means or foul) and get them to the front of this classroom.
The agents do this by advertising on social media, arranging interviews via skype, and promising the moon. It is not until the prospective teacher arrives in China that the details begin to become known (Gamlam, Adventures Abroad). Once the unsuspecting foreigner is on the ground in China, the agent places a contract in front of them that does not in any way match what was promised and says "take it or leave it, and if you leave it then go home." The employee, having often sold their car or even their house back home (and purchased the ticket to China as well as a tourist visa at their own expense) may have no money to get home, or nothing to go back to. I have personally experienced a variant on this one. After working completely legally in China for four years, I found myself confined to a hospital with a leg injury after having my previous position cancelled due to lack of funding. With mere hours left before my visa's cancellation, and with no way to leave the hospital (much less the country), an employer who had previously promised a competitive salary brought me a contract that offered far less and informed me they would not transfer my former visa (meaning I would be an illegal immigrant after midnight that night, but was unable to leave the country I was about to not have the right to be in) within hours if I did not sign.
Regarding the teacher's salary, the recruiter's contract with the school is "you pay the salary to us, we keep a cut and give the teacher the rest." However, for those who walk into the country blindly and find themselves trapped in similar situations upon arrival, it often gets worse.
The visa is another issue. To work as a teacher in China (at least legally) requires, among other things, a very specific visa (type Z), and a document called a Foreign Expert Certificate (FEC), which requires a bachelor's degree before it can be applied for. However, recruiters who are desperate to find a foreign face to send to their schools have a history of lying to potential recruits about the necessary documents, or saying "we can take care of that when you get here (Gadlam)," and the recruit falls for it. Once the prospective teacher is in China, the recruitment agency helps them process a business visa or a tourist visa (I have known several teachers here in Beijing who worked on Student Visas and have seen ads in WeChat groups offering "student visa with no need to attend classes"). The repeating chorus is always "trust us... trust us... trust us and everything will be okay." The teacher assumes "well, schools are legitimate institutions so the school wouldn't do this if there was a problem." When Chinese authorities DO come to the school to check the documents of the foreign teaching staff, it is not the recruiter, nor the school who faces punishment for this, but the employee who was scammed into accepting this visa (Leavitt & Lee, Vice).
Other teachers who realize too late that they have walked into a scam can find their passports confiscated upon arrival, rendering them unable to leave the country (Goba, Sunday World). This also makes them helpless as far as seeking assistance from their embassy or the police (though, as I mentioned in part 1 of this series, going to the police to report a crime in China is a good way to get arrested anyway, if you are foreign and the one you are accusing is Chinese). Having wages withheld, or being sent to live in barely livable conditions is also common, even for teachers who DO go through the proper channels and have the appropriate documents (Norris, W24). When authorities show up in a sweep (and it's funny how these sweeps tend to round up the foreign teachers who were conned into participating but never the Chinese who lured them into it, isn't it?), the most common advice from the employer is to lie to the cops, and the lies are usually easily transparent, and designed to cover the employer's back (Hill (1), ChinaDailyMail).
Of course, much like the sex-trafficking issue from the previous article, there is little hope of the Chinese ever cracking down on these scammers themselves (though they're quite ruthless in their crackdowns on the victims). Why is there so little hope? Because the Chinese are aware of the situation, and do not see anything wrong with it. Craig Hill of the website China Daily Mail reports of a Party Member, George Xu, who purchased an expat website and set up a recruitment scam like the one above. When confronted about it, Xu actually claimed it was the victims' fault, a position which he attempted to support with the implication that the victims somehow realized that what he was urging them to do was illegal.
In fact, eChinacities has recently instigated a new major money spinner, whereby it encourages sham recruiters and unaccredited schools to advertise for unqualified teachers to work illegally in China. At great profit to George, of course.
Such teachers unwittingly walk into what is virtually slave labour. Wages are unpaid, conditions are substandard, and contracts are not adhered to. If they complain, they can be arrested, fined, jailed and deported. I raised these concerns directly with George, who stated that it was the teachers fault for trying to cheat Chinese employment laws. George admitted he was aware of what was happening, but didn’t care.
-(Hill (2), ChinaDailyMail)
Have you heard some of the shock-stories about refugees in Europe committing rapes and claiming it was the woman's fault for dressing too provocatively? Well, this sound somewhere between that and a poacher blaming the rhino for not being faster than the bullet.
Of course, Gadlam points out (and she is technically right... on paper) "If you’re on a proper visa with a contract, you actually have legal rights in China and can go to the police." However, as I've hinted already and will go into more detail about later, this has always been a difficult process for anyone in China who isn't an "heir of the dragon," and it has become more difficult and downright dangerous lately.
This is My Housekeeper. I Keep 'er Trapped In My House
The Philippines.
Just mentioning the country's name makes me sigh in sympathy. I don't think there is a country in the world whose people suffer greater degradation at the hands of unscrupulous foreign entities, or who are more systematically sought out for exploitation all over the world, than those born under the Sun and Stars. Of course, they are in a position that makes them more vulnerable than most, as the Philippine economy virtually depends on sending their people overseas to do menial tasks in foreign lands for wages which, though greater than they could make in the Philippines, would shock most Westerners. And while the indignity and outright danger that Overseas Filipino Workers face in the Middle East has recently garnered some of the attention it should long ago have gotten, there has been precious little said about the abuse Filipinos walk into everyday in China, both the Mainland and Hong Kong.
It has become difficult for Philippine citizens of any stripe to obtain Chinese visas since a visa law overhaul in 2012 (presumably brought on by Beijing's petulance about the Philippines attempting to stand up against the PLA Navy's illegal annexation of their maritime territory that summer (AP Manila)), and even more so after another so-called "immigration reform" Beijing passed after the 19th Party Conference in 2017. However, that hasn't stopped China's human traffickers from tricking (and in some cases abducting) Philippine citizens to be trafficked in China (Asia Times Staff).
Take the case of "Rosgen," a Filipino employed in Hong Kong, whose employer forced her to travel into China with him to be "leased out" to one of her employer's friends for 10 days (Ge, South China Morning Post), which would have resulted in her, rather than her employer, facing jail time if she had been caught, according to SCMP.
Hiring foreign maids for personal services is prohibited in mainland China and foreign workers convicted of violating the employment ordinance may face up to 15 days in jail and a five-year entry ban, while employers are liable to a fine of up to 100,000 yuan (HK$118,290).
“Under this circumstance, a domestic helper may report to mainland authorities, but the dilemma is that if she has started working, she will also be subject to penalty,” said Ramon Buldron, managing director with Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants. “We have heard of a number of similar cases and they do not only take place in mainland China.”
Note that Rosgen's employer was paid for rosgen's labor, but Rosgen was not.
However, it is a relief to know that Rosgen did, at least, get help from immigration officials upon her return to Hong Kong.
Rosgen was luckier, in that regard, than most Filipina domestic servants on the Mainland are.
Imagine this situation. You are a maid, employed in a foreign country (a foreign country with a history of racism toward your country (Huang & Steger, Quartz)). Your employer has confiscated your passport to make sure you do not try to "escape" your work contract. You have been told you will need to ask permission to borrow it if you wish to conduct any official business at a bank or embassy, which your employer will grant IF they deem that it is in their interests to do so. However, if you are stopped by the police without your passport in your possession, then it is you who is in violation of the country's immigration laws.
If the situation was not already frightening enough, your employer then decides to pay you less than half the amount you agreed upon. When you question this and state that you are going to seek employment elsewhere as a result of this deception, your employer throws you out of the house by force, without giving your passport to you. You are now, in the eyes of the country you have come to, an illegal immigrant, and as stated earlier, you have no recourse to police presence or any other legal protection.
That is precisely what happened to 38-year-old "Mary," a maid in Beijing (Fan, China.org.cn), forcing her to become what's called a "black maid," meaning a domestic worker who is forced to work for a lower salary because she cannot legally be in the country in the first place (which, as I've repeatedly emphasized, means she cannot go to the police). The same article tells of a similar situation where a Filipina maid by the name of "Lisa" was working in Hong Kong as a maid, and came to Beijing because she heard the salaries were higher. Much like the teachers described above, she was recruited by a serpentine agent who issued her a non-work visa (a business visa in her case), assured her "it will be fine, trust me," and renewed her visa every six months (allowing her to travel home to see her family once per visa renewal). Then, she was injured, and due to the injury her visa could not be renewed, rendering her an illegal immigrant.
At the risk of repeating the obvious, I can relate. Being trapped in China with no way to renew your visa due to an injury is what nearly happened to me, and that was even after doing everything legally.
Fan writes that this situation is frighteningly common in China's major cities. Yet, as in the case of teachers (and the previous article regarding sex-trafficking), the rank and file of the Chinese are perfectly aware of the situation but do not see a problem with it. Examine the article wherein Fan discusses the "dilemma" these maids face.
They managed to get round the regulations by obtaining a business visa instead of a work visa with the help of agencies.
The rather blatant implication (in fact, almost explicitly stated) is that the women being trafficked into these situations are aware that what they are doing is illegal and that they actively seek out these unscrupulous agents to circumvent China's laws. And then later in the article we find "But no matter how reassuring she is, I have to pay a close attention to her whereabouts in case she goes back to the Philippines without notice," written with in a manner that suggests we're supposed to feel sorry for the employer, who must always be vigilant to prevent their "sneaky foreign servant" from slipping away in the night, as though determining when your hired help is and is not allowed to leave is some kind of right the employers are entitled to. This 'you should have more sympathy for the Chinese who take advantage of these maids' viewpoint is re-emphasized once more.
Han Xiao, a lawyer from Beijing Jingrun & Partners Law Firm, noted that the contract between a foreigner domestic worker and a Chinese employer is illegal and invalid in the Chinese mainland, which means both sides' rights and interests are unprotected.
In classic Chinese fashion, the article attempts to put the "rights" of the Chinese exploiter on the same level as the rights of their victim.
And yet, if you are a foreigner who has fallen prey to an entrapment scheme like this in China, going to the police is simply not an option, unless you want to be found "Guilty of Non-Chineseness," which is the highest crime in China.
You're Under Arrest for the Crime of Filing Charges Against the Chinese
In the first part of this series I cited sources that show China's law enforcement agencies, rather than doing anything to combat slave-trafficking, are frequently involved in it, and that is not merely true in the case of sex-trafficking (Ornell, China Digital Times). But even if a foreigner filing charges in China is lucky enough to find a police station that ISN'T mired down in corruption (and for the record, good luck with that), once you get to a court it makes very little difference what the law says. What matters is what the court says, and in China, the courts don't even bother hiding their bias.
In an article a few months back I commented on the insights into China's legal system that can be found in [Yan Jirong's book, China's Governance]. I would like to take a moment to revisit one of the key points.
"The so-called "judiciary independence" means that the court can make any judgment it wishes within the scope stipulated by the law in trial of cases regardless of any consequence caused by the judgment... Chinese judges have to consider the law and the social effect of judgment in the trial of cases."
(Yan, p. 78)
In other words, if a judge makes a decision that causes a "negative social effect," then even if the judgement was rendered according to the law, the judge will still be held liable for the "negative social effect. Having already noted in the previous article as well as earlier in this one how the Chinese are quite blatant about their "Zhonghua-good-laowai-bad" mentality in any "Chinese vs. foreigners" confrontation, even when the foreign party is plainly and obviously the victim and the Chinese plainly and obviously are in the wrong, what does the reader think the "social effect" would be if a judge actually... gasp ...ruled in favor of a "foreign devil," rather than a Chinese citizen?!
In case the answer isn't already obvious enough, bear in mind that in China, one cannot be a judge without first being a member of the Party.
...I rest my case.
Works Cited
Asia Times Staff. "Chinese Held for Trafficking Filipinos to China." Asia Times. 19 February, 2019. Web, 28 April, 2019.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/02/article/chinese-held-for-trafficking-filipinos-to-china/
Associated Press, Manila. "Philippine Warship in Standoff with China Vessels." The Guardian. 11 April, 2012. Web, 27 April, 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/11/philippines-china-stand-off-south-china-sea
Baghan, Suzanne. "How to Avoid Common Teach in China Scams." Goabroad.com. 14 August, 2018. Web, 26 April, 2019.
https://www.goabroad.com/articles/teach-abroad/avoid-teach-in-china-scams
Fan Junmei. "Philippine Maids' Dilemma in China." China.org.cn. 6 February, 2016. Web, 27 April, 2019.
http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-02/06/content_37743433.htm
Gamlam, Richelle. "Worst Case Scenario: What if I Get Scammed Teaching in China?" Adventures Abroad. 29 December, 2018. Web, 27 April, 2019.
https://www.adventuresaroundasia.com/scammed-teaching-in-china/
Ge, Celine. "Domestic Helper Taken Across Border to Mainland China and ‘Leased Out’ Illegally For 10 days." South China Morning Post. 12 January, 2016. Web, 28 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1900109/domestic-helper-taken-across-border-mainland-china-and
Goba, Neo. "51 SA Teachers Stranded in China After Jobs Scam." Sunday World, South Africa. 22 June, 2018. Web, 29 April, 2019.
https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-06-22-51-sa-teachers-stranded-in-china-after--jobs-scam/
Hill, Craig (2). "Chinese School Recruiters Scam Expat Teachers. ChinaDailyMail. 30 December, 2013. Web, 29 April, 2019.
https://chinadailymail.com/2013/09/30/chinese-school-recruiters-scam-expat-teachers/
Hill, Craig (2). "eChinacities Expat Website Now a Propaganda Machine." ChinaDailyMail. 18 December, 2013. Web, 29 April, 2019.
https://chinadailymail.com/2013/12/18/echinacities-expat-website-now-a-propaganda-machine/
Huang, Echo & Steger, Isabella. "A Gullible Nation of Maids and Banana Sellers: How Many Chinese See the Philippines." Quartz.com. 12 October, 2016. Web, 29 April, 2019.
https://qz.com/800826/a-childlike-nation-of-maids-and-banana-sellers-how-chinese-see-the-philippines/
Leavitt, Zoe & Loee, Aaron. "How English Teachers in China Are Lied to and Exploited." Vice. 28 January, 2015. Web, 18 April, 2019.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/av4pvj/the-chinese-esl-industrial-complex-shady-working-conditions-abound-for-foreign-english-teachers-in-china-127
Norris, Rasheeda. "A Cape Town Woman Shares How She Was Scammed Into a Teaching Job in China." W24. 6 June, 2018. Web, 28 April, 2019.
https://www.w24.co.za/Work/Jobs/a-cape-town-woman-tells-of-being-scammed-into-a-teaching-job-in-china-20180606
Ornell, Nathalie. "Police Turn Blind Eye to Baby Smuggling Trade." China Digital Times. 11 August, 2013. Web, 29 April, 2019.
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/parents-fooled-by-baby-stealing-doctor/
Yan Jirong. China's Governance. Beijing, 2017. Renmin University Press.
ISBN 978-7-300-24625-3