Our China employment lawyers often get requests from individuals looking for help negotiating an employment contract with a Chinese domestic company. The first thing we like to do in this sort of situation is to make sure hiring our client by the Chinese company can and will be done legally. But when we suggest the necessity of our making sure of this, the response is often that we have nothing to worry about because the Chinese company would not be doing this illegally.

WRONG.

Truth is many Chinese companies prefer to hire foreigners illegally to legally because doing so can save them a ton of money and is usually pretty low risk — at least for them.

I thought of this when I read a very thoughtful and well-written article today, entitled, The detention of two Irish women who were working side jobs at an unlicensed school in Beijing shines a spotlight on the illegal English education market in China. The article (as you probably have guessed from its very long and descriptive title, is about two teachers from Ireland who were detained in prison for more than a week for working illegally in China. Both these teachers had visas that allowed them to work full-time in China, but only with their one employer who secured these visas for them. These two teachers had taken lucrative part-time teaching jobs on the side and it was those jobs that got them arrested.

The big takeaway for anyone looking to take a job in China though should be the sections entitled, “Illegal employers have no qualms about hiring foreigners illegally” and “when the illegality is discovered, it is the foreign worker who gets the blame.”

The article talks about someone who “ran an experiment” by applying for every English language teaching job listed in Beijinger Magazine and clearly stating he could not qualify for a work visa. Only one out of the twenty potential employers declined his application! In other words, 19 out of 20 were happy to have this foreigner work for them illegally. The article notes that under China’s immigration law, foreigners who work illegally in China can be fined 5,000 to 20,000 yuan and detained for between 5-15 days and then deported. “A lot of the burden and blame falls” on the employee who works illegally in China and therefore, as the US Embassy website makes clear, “it is up to each individual to evaluate potential employers before signing a contract.”

If you want to avoid the very real risk of being fined, detained and/or deported, you should make sure that your employment in China is on the up and up, ideally before you head over there.