I would say: Just leave and do nothing they ask you for in your current province and at your
current school, provided you have another place (employer) to go to and can be sure of
his cooperation and support in the matter. They will lose sight of you once you are in
another province.

I will agree to disagree on this one.

A new system was introduced in early September that is now virtually China wide. Everything has to be done online before an applciation can even reach the provincial SAFEA office never mind the PSB. You are issued a unique identifier number which will follow you even if you change your passport number, if you were to change your name you probably could evade it. I deal with this stuff for my school so I know for fact.

As an example, a foreigner who had previously worked in Heliongjang but had exited China and everything was cancelled previously came to work at my school, upon entry of his data I received a message he was already known to SAFEA and we had to use that data. His identifier number begins with the code allcoated to Heliongjang not our province, Shaanxi. His old number followed him this year and was allocated to his subsequent paperwork with us. Same thing happened with another teacher from Jiangsu who we employed.

Under no circumstances should you agree to have your current residence permit cancelled. It
could put you in trouble and would not allow you to have sufficient time to renew your
residence permit somewhere else.

There is now an option online to void the FEC. If an associated resident permit has been issued it asks do we also wish to void this. If we do it produces a PDF which we simply print, stamp and take to the PSB. You still have the RP in your passport but it will have been cancelled electronically so you are on paper okay but if someone checks it officially you might have some awkward questions.

It is best to try and work things out, I appreciate sometimes it is not possible to do so but certainly since this year it is becoming increasingly difficult to do a runner, everything is in the schools favour.