It is even said to be the case in many training centres that foreign teachers are not teaching the IELTS preparation classes, but local teachers. Not high quality local teachers mind; apparently it is quite difficult to even to communicate with these IELTS teachers in English and they are not even as highly regarded as the training centre's standard local English teachers (which says a lot really).

I guess that there's plenty of stupid rich parents out there that are desperate enough to pay anything to get a son/daughter based abroad as it is the best way of siphoning off corruptly or ill-gotten gains and planning an escape route out of China, if they one day inevitably find themselves targeted by anti-corruption measures.

I sometimes wish China could set up a few expedition treaties with Western countries, let's see how many poor quality Chinese students will still want to apply to Western universities then?

The chances are quite high that if you meet a rich Chinese student overseas and their English is shit, their parents are dodgy government officials. If there's one way that Westerners should help the Chinese people, it should be to not let these people get away with stealing from their own people; deny them access to our countries and let them face the music back in China. Likewise, if the Chinese could stop dodgy employers employing our own criminal scumbags (often as DoS types in training centres) and not give them a little safe haven to run away to, that would be great...