If they] are 100% certain that they can get you a Z-visa in Hong Kong, then by all means come in on a tourist visa first.

Your advice to foreign English teaching candidates to willfully break the law when they come to China (all visa applications require a signed statement of purpose) will act to put many individuals at risk of deportation, fines and perhaps worse. It also puts them at the mercy of recruiters and private schools once they arrive with a brief L visa, little money, and non-residential status.

There is no provincial variation in the law, only in the enforcement of it and that enforcement activity has been increasing markedly since last year.

The fact that people in every country at every moment successfully break laws is entirely beside the point.

Your 'they' have financial motivation. What is yours in providing this destructive advice? "By all means" please tell us.

No doubt the rest of the recruiters/shills for private schools will again comment in support of your equivocation. The support of these multi-monikered monkees is in itself damning.

You are 'correct' about the fact that people sometimes succeed in breaking the law. But encouraging others to put themselves at significant risk by acting illegally is certainly not a righteous act.

Once again: arriving in China to teach English without a Z visa in your hand makes you fodder for the clowns that advise you to break the law.