Rarely do they fine the FT but it can and does happen. If you were working and quit due to being left without the proper documents due to the school and if you file an action against the school it is then a civil matter and not a criminal matter. The courts will enforce your rights to collect wages that may be due to you but that is all. At that level the court itself has no teeth or enforcement authority to do anything other than to hear the labor dispute and to issue a decision. Thousands of teachers all over China do not ever get a FEC and they work for years that way. Some get caught teaching and some do not and some police don't care. It depends largely on where you work in China and local relationships between the police and the school. In a perfect world all FT's should have the FEC but many don't. If the FT files an action and does not have an FEC the labor board cannot help them but the courts can and will enforce their rights for back wages since it is the school's fault to know and to follow the laws of China and to inform the FT of those laws. Too many FT's are held under water in China for fear of jail, fines or deportation due to not having an FEC. If they simply quit and leave, and then file a claim with the courts they will be paid. If they get caught teaching maybe something will happen to them and maybe not. I remember a situation in Kunming once where the police went into a school. No one had an FEC there. The school was fined some massive amount of money. The FT's were given exit orders, and most of them were paid full wages. None of the FT's were fined. I would not fear the Chinese courts with or without an FEC in any situation. The burden falls on the school or the employer and FT's are given a wide birth in such instances. I would add that this is true if one is white and from the west and it may not necessarily be the case if one is black or from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, somewhere in Africa, etc. Now down in Guangzhou or in Hong Kong you might really be up the creek if you get caught there without a FEC. I have an FEC and a Z visa so I don't care. Another face to this discussion is that if someone such as a FT is married to a Chinese national the cops could usually care less if they encounter them working without a FEC. I knew a guy from Russia married to a Chinese woman and he was on a tourist visa. He was hit with a trip to the police station for an hour and cut lose while some other FT's were lectured and told to stop working. The school was fined about 300,000 and they were closed for about one month. Somewhere in the south maybe in Guanxi Province (spelling?), it is legal to teach on an L visa for 180 days and thereafter the L can be turned into a Z. I don't have all of the facts on that though. Its best to have the FEC but if you don't and as long as you stopped working and are not at a school, and if the school took advantage of you, go after them like gasoline on fire. Let them explain to a judge why they did not bother to get you the FEC and a Z visa unless they were not licensed to hire FT's in the first place and if they were and still did not get the FT a Z visa and a FEC, and did not pay them on top if it all while deducting taxes from them, that is when you need a comfy seat and some popcorn because the show will get good. Don't forget to call the local tax bureau and show them your wage slips if you have them. The Chinese government just loves tax evasion. Too many FT's in China are victims of crap schools and the Chinese government knows that and typically does not make them a double victim. If your school cannot produce valid tax payment receipts for your tax deductions and if they do provide tax records and those tax records are not in sync with the local tax office, hang that school and hang them high! I know of a college that was cranking out tax receipts for their FT's and when someone needed some kind of a tax document to return to the Philippines they of course went to the tax bureau and in doing so took with them the receipts from the college. The college never paid one red cent to the local tax bureau for those teachers' wages while also deducting that money from about 30 FT's for a few years. I did not work there but the people that did work there told me that several Chinese were hauled away in handcuffs. Get your paperwork in order and fight for your rights in China.