Be very wary of individuals whether Chinese or expat who want to micro-manage your teaching. It will not only be soul-destroying but will zap your energy and enthusiasm.

Yes, that's very true. The it's my way or the highway approach to management in any organisation will likely lead to low staff morale. However, it does also seem that a lot of teachers on these pages complain of a lack of support from management and of being thrown in at the deep end so to speak.

I've worked in both the private and state systems in China and in my experience the private school that i worked for (which was the first place i worked in China) gave far more attention to professional development than the public universities/schools i've worked for since. By professional development i mean a full organised schedule of training for an individual teacher delivered by a fully qualified teacher trainer over the duration of your time with the school. This doesn't mean teaching to a specific methodology or someone elses idea of what being a good teacher is, it means being able to share experiences and observations of teaching and having your eyes opened to other possibilities. By contrast i worked at a univeristy in China that didn't even have an office for foreign teachers to work in and share ideas let alone a professional development program. I enjoyed my time working at this institution, people respected my work and i was allowed to get on with it. I guess the question you have to ask is whether a new teacher either to the profession in general or to China for that matter would have coped with the situation in quite the same way.

Of course my first hand experience is still limited to only a few schools and therefore can't be seen as fact for every private or public school in China. I have no doubt that i got very lucky with the private school i worked for and that there are many genuine grievances by foreign teachers against private schools on this board (no smoke without fire and all that). But then there are many negative posts against public schools and universities too, on this board and others like it. If you're looking for a general rule it should be this - there isn't a general rule. I believe that it's very often this kind of assumptive thinking that lands lots of teachers in trouble.