I can only speak to teaching EFL in China and ESL in the United States. Teaching EFL in Korea or Taiwan or Dubai may very well be a career. I simply don't know.

Let's take ALL the FTs in your former workplace, Zhengzhou.

As far as I know, every one of them is a contractual employee who needs to renew their contract, physical and residency permit annually or, if they are very well positioned, well qualified and in an organization with significant guanxi, every three years. My former Chinese University Dean, who had a PhD from Oxford, still hasn't qualified for that.

This means that any given year they may be denied an opportunity to stay in the country. Perhaps for reasons unexplained to them.

As far as I know, not one of these Zhengzhou FTs is accumulating a pension or significant social security even if he or she were allowed to retire in China, which in all likelihood they will not.

If they do, as you suggest, open their 'own' business, they must have a Chinese partner who will always be in China even if they, as a foreigner, is denied a residency permit. In my past business in the U.S., I have often wished that my partners could be deported. I would have seen to it, if it was possible.

If any one of these FTs becomes seriously ill, they will be unable to pass their annual physical and denied continued residency.

Not one FT will ever become a permanent resident of China. Even if the marry a Chinese citizen, each year the PSB will scrutinize them and their wife will always have the power to have them deported with unsubstantiated claims.

A career provides material success, comfortable benefits and the certainty of continued growth. A career teaching EFL in China? I think not.