I doubt very much that increasing salaries greatly in the public or the private
education sector will solve the problem of filling the large number of teaching
vacancies with qualified foreign teachers of English

I suspect that you are right and I doubt that most schools will actually raise salaries significantly.

The Chinese government has determined that it is more important to control immigration than to enable non-teachers with white faces to adorn college campuses and Shopping Mall Language Lounges.

Whether or not this will limit Chinese students oral language development is another debate. My personal view is that FTs provide students a variety of glimpses at Western culture, but do little to improve their language skills. Xi Jinping is trying to eliminate the former and cares little about the latter.

I even said ¨I am
not looking for work in China¨ within the resume and still that is the majority of the
responses I get.

Demand for NES teachers in China continues to greatly exceed supply as enforcement actions continue against FTs working illegally.

Legitimate public employers have the choice between raising salaries high enough to attract genuine teachers or cutting back on their FT staff. Private schools are either churning illegal teachers, misleading NES as to the nature of the positions or, in rate instances, improving their salaries and working conditions.

I had the same experience. Chinese schools, and mostly recruiters, go for quantity: They throw the bowl of noodles at the wall and wait to see what sticks.

They remind me of seagulls: You throw some French fries in the air or on the ground and the seagulls throw themselves at it like there's no tomorrow. Telling them not to do it would be useless, right?