There are certainly plenty of people around who are trying to use ESL in China as a spring board to further careers outside of education. For example I've recently met several banking and finance professionals who are here primarily because they lost their jobs in the City during the financial crisis and are looking to make contacts in China as well as learning Chinese as a potential way of getting a job back in that particular market. Then there are the recent graduates who are struggling to find decent, meaningful work back in their home country and so again they turn to China in the hope of learning a bit about an emerging world power and her language while also doing some traveling. I can think of a couple of people I've met in china who have had such plans and for whom it has worked out well. Incidentally both found jobs in their chosen fields (not education) in HK as opposed to mainland China.

The headline is of course a major over generalisation - you should all be used to them by now if you're posting on an Internet discussion board :-)
I'll let others pick apart the idea that teaching English is lucrative on a global scale or that there is a specific career ladder to climb while doing it!