Here's the BIG problem with ESL Trade Unions: Who the heck are they really looking out for? The people who let them exist or us chaps who have no power or money in the real world? If Trade Unions were allowed in china how would they function? Where the heck in the world is the guarantee of the leaders of these unions actually being honest with looking out for the little guy????

I have known of people who run these private "schools"/training centers to actually serve in the Communist Party. Granted they only held limited power as they may have been members of The People's Congress or the Political Consultative branches of the Chinese Communist Party. However in a world where absolute power corrupts absolutely the leaders of the ESL Trade Unions would need to be on the very inside of the political scene in China and still be able to keep an international mindset and not end up being swayed too much to one side. Now in the world of Guanxi in China how do they do it? As outsiders we are forever on the outside looking in. No matter how much praise is heaped on local chinese people as being honest or what not I have yet to hear of locals all across china banding together to form some kind of united group which looks out specifically for the interests of foreigners' labor rights. Why in the world would any foreign guy/gal just be able to come in and be viewed on equal footing with ANYBODY holding just a little leverage in the society we are discussing? They can be there for years and the locals' attitudes wouldn't change. Experienced people KNOW for a fact of how xenophobic china really is, and unfortunately even when people who are originally from china immigrate out of the country they still see themselves as being responsible for carrying the same close minded, ignorant mantra with them no matter where they go in the world.

Bottom Line: Unions in China would end up serving as just one more smokescreen/hoop for us foreigners to fight and jump through. The union leaders would talk about "looking out for our interests" while taking a little out of our paychecks each and every time. Private "schools" and even public education branches would have ONE MORE REASON to deduct money from our salaries as the additional tax penalties/costs for dealing with and keeping yet another group of supposed watchdogs happy. In fact now they can do it with a big smile on their faces and say we're paying for something we asked for ourselves. Instead of having something which is on our side we have yet another corrupt group to fight through. Instead of less bureaucracy we now have more. Instead of fighting less people who want to steal and cheat us out of our money we now have more people who want to do this.

The problems of education in China run beyond education in and of itself. The problem is systemic. Nothing less than a systemic change is going to give a chance for this problem in the world of education in china to be resolved. The idea of adding unions to curb the dissatisfaction of the education scene in china is like throwing a band-aid on a cut artery and thinking that itself will stop the bleeding, it won't .