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Part 1 - Coming to China
Links to China-related Sites /
Introduction page / Table of Contents page / Home Page / e-mail the editor, Thor May
Part 1 Coming to China : Employer & Government Formalities
Finding a Job / Applying for a Job / Medical Certificate / Qualifications and Salary / Negotiating a Contract / Sample Foreign Expert's Contract / Standards of Employer Provided Accommodation / Health Cover / Spouses and Children / Contract Starting Dates / Official Letter of Invitation / Visas / Booking an Airfare / Excess Baggage / Fare & Startup Expense Reimbursement / Getting an Employment Certificate and Foreigner Residence Permit ("Green Card") / Handling Delays, Evasions, Stuff-Ups, Low Standards, Language Confusion, etc. ... /
Qualifications and Salary: Negotiating a Contract
1. Salaries
Like the world over, salaries and what you have to do to earn them are a mixed equation. It partly depends on supply & demand, but these forces operate within a framework of the local culture. That is unless, of course, you happened to be posted by an international company which will have its own culture to measure by.
Perhaps the largest number of expatriates ("foreigners" to use the government's rather chauvinistic classification) are teachers of one sort or another. The largest number of those will be English teachers, since the Chinese middle classes are frantically trying to become worldly, mobile and "international" in outlook. (By some estimates, 200 million Chinese are learning English).
The salaries of "foreign experts" such as language teachers are basically set within bands by the Foreign Expert's Bureau in Beijing (who also do most of the hiring). The university job range in 1998-99 for teachers with a relevant university degree was Y2000 to Y2600 per month (although some places pay less when qualifications are marginal, and some private colleges quite a bit more). This has crept up (2001) in some places to Y3700 for an MA, but you need to check. Your room for negotiation therefore depends upon persuading the employing authority that you have the most desirable level of qualifications and experience. It may also depend upon their level of desperation to obtain a teacher. The demand is such that a good many folk with marginal ability/qualifications as language teachers do find employment. Some do an excellent job, while others have doubtful professional commitment and do little for their students or the reputation of "foreign experts" in general. Under-qualified personnel may be offered employment at a salary and conditions inferior to the sample contract outlined below.
University officers, or other employing personnel, will probably tell you that Y2600 a month is "three times a Chinese professor's salary", a nonsense since many local professors get large bonuses as well. It could also be half the income of the taxi driver who brings you from the airport. The monthly income of an average urban middle class Chinese family in 1998 is probably about Y2000 to Y4000 a month. Numerous large department stores are packed with customers, and charge prices for clothing, shoes, food, furniture and electronics that would make a customer from Sydney, London or New York wonder if they had left home; (canny locals find ways to get many things much cheaper, but here as everywhere, a sucker is born every minute).If you are coming to China to get rich, or even to feel rich, on a foreign expert's salary, then forget it. You can live decently, but you won't save much by international standards.
Standards of Employer Provided Accommodation
The Chinese government is having a tough time at the moment stopping an army of teachers resigning to become taxi drivers and insurance salesman. To get rich is glorious, and that's not a teacher's lot. In an effort to hang on to them, new teacher apartments are being built at a rapid rate, and many of them are quite as attractive, inside, as any you would find in the West. They are sold to the teachers on favourable terms, and thus attract the kind of care that home-owners at apt to put into the family wealth. It was once rare to be invited to Chinese home, but some of these new, proud owners may be happy to invite you up for a meal.
The general, improving accommodation standards are bound to rub off eventually onto foreign guest accommodation. By most accounts, standards of expatriate accommodation vary considerably. Since this is one of the few areas within which universities etc. can genuinely compete for expatriate employees, the more livewire places can put a serious effort into offering something comfortable. The chances are that you won't actually see the accommodation before you sign a contract, so you may have to take a lot on faith. Don't be shy to ask questions. How many hours a day does the hot water run? Is the air conditioner reliable (if there is one). Are there cooking facilities inside the apartment, or somewhere down a corridor? Is there a washing machine? Can they guarantee a phone connection that works with the university's computer centre, and an Internet slip/ppp account from the flat? What are the university's ISP charges? What is the average monthly charge for electricity etc? ...
Where the Foreign Affairs Office of an institution can't offer you a favourable answer to some question, they will probably pretend they didn't receive the question at all. This is exasperating, but you can't do much. Take it as a negative answer, and politely let them know that you are interpreting their silences in this manner. If you are lucky, you may be able to make e-mail contact with other English speakers on the campus, like current expatriate teachers, who can give you an independent assessment. The Foreign Affairs Office should be prepared to put you in touch with such people. Note that these independent viewpoints can be very helpful, sometimes, but may also at times be unrealistic or prejudiced. I remember being told that you could live on $2 a day in Wuhan. Mm. Maybe with a diet of boiled cabbage!
Health Services
Health Cover: Health cover is NOT comprehensive. The standard university contract now says that you receive the same health cover as local employees. If you are employed on a Chinese salary, this condition is likely to apply in most occupations. Chinese residents' health cover translates as follows: a) attention from the employer's institutional clinic and resident doctor is virtually free (officially you pay 10% but the whole system is heavily subsidized). Note that most institutions of any size are set up to provide housing, basic health care, even schooling. The practice of this health care will be well intentioned, but the standard is a bit of a lottery. Staff, on the whole, do not speak English, their resources are basic, and their training suspect. Prescriptions may not come with dosage information unless you ask, and the medicine itself may be vaguely described as "Chinese medicine", as if that explained everything. It is the university doctor who will have to refer you to a hospital for more advanced treatment. b) You pay 30% when visiting local hospitals "designated" by the employer. c) You pay 50% when visiting local hospitals not designated by the employer. d) Expenses incurred in registration, doctors home visits, transportation for visiting the doctor, fitting false teeth, cleaning the teeth, cosmetic surgery, massage, getting spectacles, hospitalization (except for a percentage refund on medicine), and non-medical tonics ... are paid for by you.
Medical Emergency: The critical omissions in health cover (see [c] above) are hospitalization and "transport". In other words, if you have a heart attack, you pay for the ambulance, the operation (if you haven't died), and the hospital bed. The idea of medical evacuation (e.g. to Hong Kong or America) is not in the local lexicon. I have not been able to find out what local medical insurance (if any) is available. I have pressed my own institution without success for some sort of pre-planning for medical emergency. For example, staff in my "guest hotel" have neither emergency telephone contacts, nor first aid training (e.g. simple cardiac massage, artificial resuscitation). There are no English-speaking emergency medical contacts. If something ever happens, they will be running around like headless chickens. This might be a "planned economy", but practical pre-planning for anything is almost totally absent (people are deeply conditioned to avoid responsibility). I have to admit that sometimes late at night I wake up in a cold sweat, feeling a long, long way from help.
Medication: Most of the medications that you would need a doctor's prescription for in the West are available on request, over the counter in pharmacies. Sometimes it is a bit of a struggle to find an available equivalent to your favourite poison, but common requirements like antibiotics are easily available. Check the expiry date though. The only advantage of a prescription from an institution's in-house clinic is that they also have small in-house pharmacies with medicines at subsidized prices.
Hospitals: My personal encounter with a local medical hospital has only been brief. It wasn't promising. Although every kind of medical test was demanded before entering China, another examination was "required" upon arrival. Three of us were driven to a hospital where the doctor took documentation from our keeper. He not only refused to examines us, he wouldn't make eye contact or communicate with us in any way. This "doctor" however insisted that we must have a blood test for syphilis. It was preposterous, and clearly just a way of extracting a "fee". One of the three dug in his heels, told the doctor to go to hell, and no more was heard of the matter.
The preceding example is not necessarily representative of Chinese hospitals. This is a country with several parallel economies, from subsistence to in-your-face capitalism. There are services to match these economies at every level. In a city the size of Wuhan, for the right price and with the right contacts, you could almost certainly have open-heart surgery with some confidence. For the average citizen hospital is more likely to be a rather bleak experience which depends upon the aid and contribution of personal family members to make it tolerable. However you can be certain that at every level and for every service you will literally need your wallet in your back pocket to pay cash in advance. Independent medical insurance is not easy to obtain locally, and your employer may wonder what you are talking about.
Dental Care: If the problem crops up spontaneously (e.g. a toothache) you will be refunded on the same pattern as general medical care. Charges are high by local standards, but quite cheap compared to countries like Australia or USA. I have made about four visits to a nearby dental hospital, on the referral of my university's doctor. A little story about this, "Barefoot Dentist", is appended for amusement. Visiting the dental hospital meant sitting in a corridor each time with my interpreter, for three hours or so -- a common enough experience in Western outpatient clinics also. You are issued with a patient record book, which is just as well, because I never saw the same dentist twice. Most of the dentist's seemed to know their trade OK, and a couple even had a bit of English. The dental chair units do not have suction however, so you have to do a good deal of spitting. Most dental work is done on inspection rather than using imaging. I did have an x-ray on my third visit, which meant going to another part of the hospital, and paying another fee up-front. The image was printed out neatly on an inkjet printer, which I had to tote back to the dentist.
You can elect to be treated by a "professor" for a higher fee. When a wisdom tooth had to be extracted, my minder advised the service of a professor. This gent spent ten minutes telling me to go home because there was "no problem" (maybe he was afraid of losing face if complications arose), then he suddenly said "it must come out", made me pay in advance for anaesthetic, and took to it with muscular determination. The tooth was rotten to the core.
Spouses and Children
Contract Starting Dates
Official Letter of Invitation
Visas
Booking an Airfare Excess
Baggage
Fare & Startup Expense Reimbursement
Getting an Employment Certificate and Foreigner Residence Permit ("Green Card")
Handling Delays, Evasions, Stuff-Ups, Low Standards, Language Confusion, etc. ...