Unfortunately, London Gal, it is neither up to you nor to me to decide who is properly qualified and who deserves a Z visa to work in China. It is the Chinese who invite and decide, and since they have no sense for high-quality education but for show and pretence, they will invite and decide uneducated foreign teachers from abroad to come for work in their schools or "schools". I have said that repeatedly over the years while posting on this board, and here is a point where I could fully agree with you.

It would help if you cared to take a deeper look at the structural problems of education in China, they are both system and culturally determined. Then, take a look at the system that is at work in the ESL industry, and you will get the whole picture. And then you will understand why rubbish places like EF contribution nothing to make it better, they are part of the problem.
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I've worked with degree-carrying FT's in China and also non-carrying ones. Most FT's with degrees, were young, had limited grasp of grammar and low vocabularies. Whereas, all the old fogies I met, without degrees to their names were far more advanced in the aforementioned. Generally, older FT's, although never having been to university were far better read. I propose this, if you have two candidates for a job as FT, one degree-holder and one not, make them both sit a written and oral English exam. Although, personally, I think that any idiot is good enough to teach oral English in China, or even follow lesson plans in English Centres.

I myself prefer to work in private schools; by and large they are rubbish but they are a lot cleaner than state institutions.

Generally speaking, the properly qualified teachers who work in China are the ones just not good enough to have made it in their own countries. A cop-out comes to mind.

What do you regard as the properly qualified teacher? An arts degree and a TEFL? Been to Teachers' Training College, what?