You are offered 10 months. You work for 10 months. You get paid for 10 months. How is this a cheat? Who's being short-changed?

I've already addressed this multiple times. You are not paid for 10 months, you receive a yearly salary in 12 monthly installments. If you are going to talk about teacher's salaries as just on a monthly basis, than why do you say 10 months when you know very well that you don't have to work anywhere near 10 months at a public school. It's closer to 8 months (at least at a university), because you have June/July off in the summer, and often 2 months in the winter. You don't seem to have a problem with being paid 10 month's salary for 8 months of work? Why is there this discrepancy between being paid 10 months and working only 8 or a bit more? The answer is that you are not on a monthly salary, just like in America. That is how it is a cheat.

Also, I pointed out that you can have two 6-month contracts, which equals one 12 month contract. You haven't addressed this strange anomaly.

And, as I've already shown in another post, many universities will give a 12 month contract to returning or qualified teachers, simply because they deserve it. I quote again from the MKL site.

Contracts at public schools and universities are typically 10 months in duration for the initial contract and are then extended for 12 months thereafter, such that foreign English teachers will be paid for the summer break if (and only if) they renew their contracts. However, foreign teachers with advanced degrees and several years of teaching experience in China may be able to negotiate an initial 12-month contract.

I will state again, to not fight for the 12 months one deserves as a returning or qualified and experienced teacher is to be a chump. Maybe things have changed enough for the worse that we can't ask for the 12 month contract anymore (though I do have one), and it that's the case it's a sad state of affairs and not one people should look to as standard practice and thus beyond criticism.