Teaching English in China
Some say the risk
Is greater than the reward
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
We’ve all been there.
You worked hard to get your expensive college degree...
only to realize it’s left you
desperately unprepared for the real world.
So what do you do?
Obviously the answer is take out student loans
to go back to school and get another expensive degree.
Don’t try this at home, kids.
Trust me.
But for others who don’t go to grad school,
the answer could be teaching English overseas.
Now I often get asked:
Is it a good idea to teach English in China?
To which I say,
teaching English in an authoritarian surveillance state
that arrests people in the middle of the night
and sends them to labor camps?
What could possibly go wrong?
There are about 400,000 foreigners
working in the Chinese education system.
But, oddly enough,
things are going wrong.
According to Reuters,
there’s been a surge of arrests of foreign teachers in China.
In fact, one American lawyer
whose firm has been handling many of the cases, said,
“The risks of going to China to teach far outweigh the rewards.”
They’ve written extensively about it on their own website.
The risks are serious.
Education First is a Swiss company
that operates 300 schools in China.
They’ve seen a “significant” increase in detentions in China
for alleged offenses including drugs,
fighting and cybersecurity violations.
Mainly these detentions have resulted in docked pay or deportation.
But some of those crimes, especially drug crimes,
can be met with severe punishment in China.
Especially if, for instance, the country you’re from
might be having a political dispute with China.
But Chris, you say, Chinese authorities should crack down
on foreign teachers guilty of drug offenses.
Well, they’re not just going after teachers
who committed drug offenses *in China.*
According to Education First,
staff have been “picked up by police at their home and work
as well as in bars and nightclubs and have been questioned
and brought in for drug testing.”
That drug testing involves using hair samples.
Hair samples can contain traces of cannabis for up to three months.
That can be a problem for teachers who come from countries
where cannabis is legal.
Like parts of the United States.
Or all of Canada.
Now is generally not a great time to be Canadian in China.
In fact, Canadians in China might want to
just pretend to be Americans.
It’s only fair.
Americans abroad have been pretending to be Canadians for years.
Anyway, China’s Ministry of Education is using these drug “scandals”
to make a push for dealing with foreign teachers
“in a serious manner with no appeasement.”
But don’t worry.
It’s not that the Chinese Communist Party
simply hates foreign English teachers.
They hate foreigners in general!
See, this latest crackdown on foreign teachers
seems to be part of a broader rise in anti-foreign sentiment.
And of course, the Communist Party
wants the education system to be ideologically pure.
And a lot of those those misguided foreigners
are not particularly helpful when it comes to pushing
“core socliast values.”
The problem, when it comes to education,
is Chinese intellectuals.
“Intellectuals expect more toward democracy
and the rule of law from globalization.
Some of them express unrealistic dissatisfaction
toward the country.”
Lousy intellectuals.
Complaining about the country just because
it doesn’t have democracy or the rule of law,
or because the government kills its own citizens for meditating.
Intellectuals make such unreasonable demands!
The Communist Party has always made schools
the front line in ideological indoctrination.
It comes in waves.
Chairman Mao hated intellectuals.
His Cultural Revolution forced students
to denounce their teachers for backwards thinking
and holding Western sympathies.
There was more freedom in the 80s.
But after the mass student protests in 1989
that ended with the Tiananmen Square Massacre,
the Communist Party realized that the people
had been allowed to think a little too freely.
So they launched another wave of patriotic education.
And after current Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power,
he stressed so-called “core socialist values”
and socialist education.
Xi gave a speech last year saying
“it’s imperative to uphold Marxism as a guiding ideology
and stick to the path of socialist education
with Chinese characteristics.”
Obviously, it’s not imperative to uphold the parts of Marxism
that say you shouldn’t allow giant corporations.
Or let rich elites play around with millions...
while the masses are dirt poor.
Or frankly, let any private individual own the means of production.
Especially Jack Ma.
But, you know,
the people ought to uphold the *other* parts of Marxism.
Like the “conquest of political power by the working class.”
Uh, wait, don’t do that either.
Anyway, according to Reuters,
“Last September, China launched a wide-reaching campaign
to remove foreign influences from education,
including efforts to ban foreign history courses,
outlaw self-taught material and revise textbooks
to focus on core Communist Party ideology.”
Which means less time for teaching useless things like English,
and more time for Xi Jinping thought!
And state-run media have been a big part of
the demonization of foreign teachers.
The most tasteful being my favorite,
the Global Times.
Take for instance this lovely article,
Guests of China need to deserve what they get,
with a close up of a black student for some reason.
It complains “Foreigners in China have been granted
‘super-national treatment’
and even extra-legal privileges.”
We’ll look at that special treatment
foreigners are getting in a moment.
And this article calls for “a crackdown on ‘unqualified’
and ‘immoral’ foreign teachers in the country.”
And this article uses a scandal involving 2 people
to drum up anti-foreign sentiment
against the other 400,000 foreign teachers.
It also criticizes parents who believe foreigners
can teach English better than Chinese teachers.
What a crazy thing for parents to believe!
Which is why this article says its a crime for parents
to deprive their children of the right to patriotic education.
All this means foreign teachers in China
are increasingly vulnerable and easily taken advantage of.
So what happens to a bright eyed foreigner
who comes to China to teach English?
I asked fans of China Uncensored to send me their stories.
I’ve altered their names to protect their identities.
MP wrote to me that while in China,
“We must notify our bosses with where we were going,
who we were going with,
for how long, and why.”
DB said,
“The bathrooms were never cleaned and really disgusting
since the school did not have janitors.
I had to clean my own room after every class.
The students were great.”
SD said, “We were given rules to follow on campus
and in the surrounding community.
I was also informed that we will be watched closely at all times.”
That person also said they were punched by a student,
who got off because the parents were wealthy.
Foreign textbooks with content counter to the official Party line
were also seized... and burned.
Yeah, book burning is always a good sign of progress.
TB told me, “The ‘Us vs. them’ mentality
was prevalent everywhere I went,
even in Shanghai.
The extra paperwork we have to do every year for the visa,
the stares, the looks;
what’s the point of learning the culture and language
if that is how we get treated?”
LDH said,
“I had local police come monthly to check to see
if I still live at the same apartment.”
He also mentioned,
“not getting paid at all or them
finding every single excuse in the book
to deduct your salary that would make your jaw drop”
ISB said, “Apart from teaching English,
we were told to teach PE,
clean the school,
serve food and wipe up butts.”
BQ said, “Workers here have no rights whatsoever.
Unpaid overtime is expected of everyone, including me.
I’m paid for 20 hours of work per week,
but the school has tried to get me to work 40.”
KN said, “I was followed by two plain clothes police
and basically assaulted at my front door.
They claimed we were harboring a fugitive.”
And here’s my personal favorite:
MW said, “Another thing was being ‘corrected’
by Chinese coworkers on English grammar.
Being told the origin of Christmas was an orphan boy
wandering the woods in December
who then found shelter under a pine tree.
That the plural of peanut, (
peanuts) is pronounced ‘penis.’”
Which means those students are going to have
a really interesting time if they ever order snacks
at a baseball game.
There were other stories viewers told me, too.
Things like dealing with propaganda,
brainwashing, corruption, and even sexual harassment.
Also finding out that they were hired illegally by the school
and having the police take their passports away.
But not all the stories were negative.
A lot of people had positive experiences, too.
Many said despite all the craziness they had to deal with,
they had an amazing time, met many great people—
students and adults,
and made friends for life.
Some people even met their spouses in China.
But in the current environment, is the risk worth the reward?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
If you’re seriously thinking of teaching English in China,
make sure you do your research first.
And if you’ve taught in China,
share your story below!
And before you go,
now is the time when I answer a question
from a member of the China Uncensored 50 cent army—
fans who support the show on the crowd funding website Patreon!
Shelley floryd asks,
“think there's a considerable threat
of the Chinese/American trade war
escalating into actual military warfare
(like how people feared the Russian/American Cold War
would escalate to nuclear war)?”
A great question!
There certainly is cause for concern.
As I mentioned in a recent episode,
the gap in ability between the US
and the Chinese Communist Party’s military is shrinking.
This recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations
says China could soon rival the US in fields like AI,
robotics, 5G, and possibly biotechnology.
So a war between the United States and China
could be very bad for both sides.
However, I don’t think it will come to that.
At least not because of the trade war.
China’s economy is suffering from it.
That’s an existential threat to the Chinese regime.
The last thing the Communist Party can manage
is throwing itself into an actual armed conflict with the US.
Even though the military tech might be improving, remember,
China has not been in an armed conflict
since a brief war with Vietnam in the 70’s.
It has essentially no experienced leadership.
So even more so than in the Cold War,
I think the chance of a physical military confrontation
with China is low.
Thanks for you question and your support.
And if you have a question for me
you want to hear answered on the show,
sign up to join the China Uncensored 50 cent army,
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we would have to shut down the show
if it weren’t for your support.
And to everyone, thanks for watching!
Once again I’m your host Chris Chappell.
See you next time.