Karen, you need to tell Alex that you want to talk directly with the university. It's totally unreasonable for him to expect you to accept a job without being able to do this. Whenever I've dealt with recruiters I've always requested this, once it's been confirmed that the school is interested in me, and the recruiter has always been obliging. You need to get the answers to your questions straight from the horses mouth and request that they send you a link to their school website. It would also be a good idea to ask for the email addresses of other FTs who work there or who have done, just recently.

If you feel that the recruiter is deliberately holding back details from you, and he won't give you the school contact information, then you could do one of two things. Either find the contact info of the school, yourself, on the Internet, or just forget it and look elsewhere. As you have only found bad reviews about this school I would recommend the latter. There are still plenty of other opportunities in China.

I haven't read all the other posts on this thread, but you really need to do so carefully, and really consider if it's worth the risk to take a chance with this school.