The situation has basically come down to this from what I've experienced. 10 years back when capitalism in China was still adventuring in the brave new world of hiring foreigners to be ESL teachers, the Chinese employers didn't know what to expect, and they therefore conducted business in a more open, honest manner and hired teachers for their abilities to speak English on a level that they couldn't really understand. That was enough for any ESL teacher to get a job.

However, guanxi with government officials have made these bosses satisfied with where they're at and how they think. So they have reverted to the insidious habits of believing that if they pay you your salary, you have no free will when it comes to satisfying their demands. This plus with the false assumption that China indeed is finally "making it" gives them an egotistical feeling that they have a "right" to vindicate how they should treat you just because of where you're from.

Experience counts only for the foreigner who knows how to look for the right school based on their life in China. For employers you could have had a bajillion years of experience teaching somewhere but if your face or your ethnicity doesn't match then you're automatically eliminated from the equation during the hiring process. Employers will give you all kinds of reasons why they shouldn't hire you, many whom would give you the right to sue them in other countries for discrimination.

Because of the awareness in the general local population that more foreigners are coming to China, they feel that they have a choice on who they can choose, when in reality they only have a slim picking of good teachers. Most good teachers who have good jobs in developed countries won't come over here to teach. The employers know that they don't necessarily get the best teachers coming over yet they then generalize to the entire expat population out of ignorance. This makes life hard for people who are either: A. New to China and have little teaching experience (making them easy to exploit) B. Teachers who don't necessarly have certificates or degrees even if they are competent to handle teaching in China C. Teachers of certain ethnic backgrounds

The bottom line of why employers give teachers all this grief can really be traced back to one common thread in their mindsets: THEY ARE ALWAYS RIGHT. Although they know in the back of their minds that Degrees and what you look like doesn't have anything to do with quality; Good teachers are hard to find although if you include non-developed countries they really would be looking at a lot of candidates; You actually NEED TO MAKE AN EFFORT at communicating with expats (but they don't want to for face saving or power trip reasons). Employers simply CANNOT or they REFUSE to play a role in the acclimation of making expats feel more comfortable and at home.

Everyone working in China as an ESL teacher should remember this: If your requests are seen as trivial, you work for a trivial place! Employers simply don't treat people like how they would want to be treated so the entire world of ESL in China has become trivialized. Experience counts only in the hands of people who see value in it. However with employers in China they can just give any stupid reason if they don't like you based on the information that you have given them.

To all the foreign teachers who want to make it in such a place, being careful is the best advice.