I have only met one Canadian in China who I liked. He was a straight shooter, and he would always stand up for his rights and hurl extreme verbal abuse toward any loawai or Chinese person who had wronged him. So he gained my respect.
Foreigners in China who always try to avoid confrontation and "be nice" to Chinese people should be avoided. They are GW's, end of story!

I'm not so sure about that, because of the differing cultural values you can't be quite as direct as people are in the West imo. However, being direct and in your face can be a great way of dragging certain bosses out of their comfort zone in order to level the playing field through deliberately causing them a loss of face.

I try to avoid confrontation with everybody whether they be foreign or Chinese, it is just of matter of standing up for yourself in the correct way at the correct time, although I am certainly not nice when I lose my temper. I'm usually nice to NICE Chinese people, but I will still confront the not so nice ones about stuff that I think is not right.

Then again, some things are just like in the West in that when I have an issue in my current job, a quiet, pleasant, friendly chat with my boss that raises the issues often works better than shouting at them and getting their backs up. However, these days I am dealing more with far more academic types with far more experience of dealing with foreigners than the traditional autocratic kind of boss that you will usually find in state backed companies that belong to different industries.