John you make a good point here.

I mentioned before China has a peculiar 'double down' response to anything they see as critical or take as disliked. I mentioned less foreigners were arriving and the Chinese say "Oh.. okay then more should stay out!". That's a mentality.

But the other issue here is rightfully wanting less dumbasses here. So far the response to that seems to be super strict rules for THEM. As in notorious drunken party boys suddenly finding out little paperwork details aren't quite right and they have to return home or go elsewhere. Good I say.

But your best point is that simply creating stricter rules is nearly going to have the opposite effect. In this example: of the 20 native english speaking westerners we have only 7 or 8 who could be said to have proper teaching credentials (BA or higher, teaching degrees AND who have all the proper original documents, clean records etc).

All of them will or soon will go to Korea or Japan or the UAE (or one of those wealthy Gulf States). All of them. Bar none. Most did not come to China first either. One of them did and quite seriously lasted 2 weeks and was back in the USA by week 3 of a Uni semester in China.
Ok.

Truth is almost all the ESL or 'EFL' teachers in China are 'fudging' the B.a. or Uni diplomas BUT most have something. TEFL, a college degree even if unrelated to English or teaching in any ways, or they have technical or trade schools or they have IT certifications (whatever those MCSA or Oracle somethingorothers) and then they have some experience tutoring for example.

They can't quite get to Japan even though they are probably doing as well as the next guy or gal. They aren't quite qualified for a wealthy UAE school or Korea's now surprisingly strict demands for every original transcript and you-name-it.

These are the ones who will work in China though. They are more than qualified and IF they want to keep teaching overseas then they have less options and will stick around longer.

Eliminate them and cut down that lets-face-it fact that yes they are probably using fake or 'exaggerated' diplomas (as if a BA is even required) and yes you eliminate pretty much the core and all the best people anyways.

I really do think that yes it ends up the only ones left might be the outright scammers, scummiest of them all, the worst of the rejects who won't care if they forge everything, steal identities even, produce outright fraudulent documents across the board. (at least now we have legitimate documents + just an exaggeration or two at worst).

Anyways, far be it for us to think this through logically or in some 'common sense' rationale of course. Its not like that will win out anyways