Personally i think this advice is irresponsible.

In a decent country where law and regulations are commonly respected, I would agree with you. With reference to China, I cannot agree with you. It is most of the Chinese operating the crappy ESL industry in that country themselves who do not abide by the laws and do everything to violate them to the foreign teacher's disadvantage. If things get too hot for them, they will use their guanxi (relationships) and bribe the officials in charge to get away with what they are doing. If even the native Chinese ESL operators do not respect and follow the law of their own own country, why should foreign teachers do so? It seems that everybody is trying to get the most out of this situation, so why should a foreign teacher "sacrifice" her/himself and leave all the benefits to his/her crappy emplo0yer while make him/herself a loss all the time?

The best thing to advise is to stay away from all kind of illegal and crappy ESL operations in China and find legal and decent schools to work for and, as a foreign teacher, to abide by the law as the operators of public schools (normally) do.

All training centre operations violate Chinese law in one way or the other, they are NOT to be trusted, and everyone is urgently advised to stay away from these crappy operations!