Beware of dodgy employment agencies when visiting China, SA expats warn
FOR four years, Mandlakazi Refiloe Molefe has seen many South Africans fall victim to unscrupulous employment agents who take their money and lure them to China with promises of lucrative employment, only to abandon them in a foreign country without the correct papers.
This year alone, Molefe and a small community of young South Africans living in China have had to intervene and help raise funds for five people, including a family of three, to return home after they were given 24 hours to leave the People’s Republic as their papers were not in order.
All this, thanks to agents who feigned ignorance when confronted by officials, who abandoned the young people who were in China to work as English teachers.
“I always tell people never to come here through an agent. Agents are always bad.
“You should come directly through the school you’ll be working for. Four people I’m talking to right now are having problems. Agents take your money, and they’ll convince you to come with a tourist visa, but they just want to make money out of you.
“So you come here with a tourist visa and 30 days later they tell you to go to Hong Kong for a short period – using your own money to travel – so it looks like you’ve left mainland China, because once you leave you can start the process all over again.
“It’s basically to buy time, but also so they can get as much money from you as possible while they finalise your work permit application.
“You get to Hong Kong and they tell you to apply for another tourist visa to come to mainland China.
“Hong Kong authorities have realised they are being used so that door is closed.
“One lady actually left for Hong Kong with nothing but a backpack, thinking she’d only be there for a weekend, but she ended up having to go back home with nothing but that backpack – all her things were in mainland China,” said Molefe.
While other agents register their recruits and ensure that their papers such as work permits are in order, they tend to keep their passports, so many South Africans are walking around China with only photocopies of their passports.
A percentage of a teacher’s salary goes to the agents and they usually spite their recruits by refusing to give them release forms once their contracts end, so they can apply for jobs with other companies.
It has not always been like this, says Molefe. The issue of agents swindling people appears to be a new phenomenon and as a result, social media groups initially formed to help South Africans interact and share tips about how to send money home, or even ship their belongings home once their time in China has ended, have evolved to incorporate sharing information on dodgy agents and what schools to avoid.
“We’ve never had issues like we’re having now, with people coming with visa problems. DAI Bing, African Affairs DirectorGeneral, Department of Foreign Affairs: “Some local intermediaries put up hoax attractive adverts to lure young Africans here. Our governments need to work together to crack down on these bogus agencies to ensure that such exploitation does not happen. At government level we’ve been working very hard, but we need to work harder to ensure that those intermediaries are stopped, to prevent such things from happening”. Before coming to China:
Certify your documents and apply for a Z visa.
Do research and ensure your potential employers are legally registered in China (refer to A lot of South Africans are desperate. Once they get an offer they get too excited. Some feel once they’ve signed a contract they are bound by it, but that’s not true. The contract is only binding once you get to China because they would have sponsored your visa,” Molefe says.
While she personally never experienced any problems coming to China, and believes some of those who find themselves on the wrong side of the law could have avoided situations they found themselves in had they done thorough research, she says it’s not easy to just turn a blind eye.
“When people are going through problems it’s easier to just say you could have avoided this had you done research. But you can’t leave people to suffer alone. Already this year we’ve helped five people financially after agents duped them,” she says.
Last week, Molefe saw the children she teaches for the last time. Her bags are packed and she has started giving away some things she doesn’t intend shipping back home to the other South Africans she has forged friendships with over the past four years.
Along with her husband, she will be returning home additional information on Wechat groups below).
Make sure you don’t have a criminal record and visit the Chinese Embassy’s website for additional information on the dos and don’ts.
Download Wechat so you can join groups of South Africans working in China, and ask a few questions. Group members are very helpful and always willing to share their experiences.
Double check the figures and don’t get too excited, because many have arrived in China only to realise they earn a fraction of what colleagues who negotiated better deals earn. If your post for good in four weeks, after she has sorted out her pension papers and spent some well-deserved relaxation time visiting friends in other cities like Shanghai before flying home.
Why China?
Hers has been a memorable journey of personal growth, learning about the Chinese culture and using her holidays to travel around China and to European cities such as Berlin, Prague, Lisbon, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Venice with her husband.
Tired of corporate South Africa, the UCT economics graduate packed her bags to work as a teacher in China in April 2014, with her husband following a few months later. Their first stop was Shanghai, where they stayed for two years before moving to Beijing.
“Shanghai was out of this world. My husband is an architect so he got to see a Chinese structure, in the traditional building style, being built from scratch. We got to travel and he got to see all the buildings he saw in textbooks while studying at UCT – some in China, others in other countries we travelled to,” she says.
But there were moments that left Molefe taken aback. is in a big city like Beijing and Shanghai, rental will also be more expensive compared with rentals in smaller towns. Again, check with South Africans already in China if the offer you got is good enough, or if you should negotiate for more money.
If you’re not South African, check if your country is listed as one of the countries China considers first-language English speakers. Within 24 hours of arrival in China: Register with police at a local police station.
Before her husband joined her in Shanghai, she was the only black person in their district and roused a lot of curiosity wherever she went.
“Cars would stop on the streets and people would just stare at me.
“Some people will just touch my hair without even asking. I had long braids when I came here, so when I took them off I went to school with my Afro up, and the children started screaming, wondering why my hair was standing.
“So the next day I tied my hair back and they were calm,” she says.
Moving to Beijing gave her a different perspective and she found Chinese people in the capital city to be “warmer”.
“What I enjoy most about Beijing is that there’s a community, compared to Shanghai. I guess because there are embassies and universities here, so there are many black people. Even the Chinese here are warmer, they won’t just touch your hair or skin like in Shanghai,” she says
Inspired
Molefe never experienced any of the challenges some endure, as she came directly through the school that hired
Within two weeks of arrival in China: The school (employer) has to apply for your work permit and all your documents, and results of a full medical test will be needed.
Within 30 days of arrival: Get your Z visa converted to a permanent residency one and go back to a local police station to update your details.
Make sure your work address corresponds with the address on your work permit. (The writer has been part of some for the past four months): China Visa Tube Schools & Agencies Reviews 2 – Scallan’s & Associates SA Ladies in Beijing uBuntu in China South Africans in China her, not through an agent. But she says while South Africa is one of the countries favoured to recruit teachers from, some schools go as far as advising teachers to lie about their nationality, as some parents tend to be willing to pay more for teachers who are American.
But despite a few things that irked her, Molefe has been so inspired by the Chinese education system that she plans to open her own school in South Africa one day.
“I’m so impressed... Public school facilities in China compare to our private schools in South Africa. Schools provide extra-curricular activities and take children on excursions – all paid by the government.
“China has ignited in me a need to create a curriculum suitable for an African child.
“Looking at how proud the Chinese are about their culture, I realise that Africans should learn about things they are proud about, things that make them feel good about themselves, to know our history and develop a sense of pride,” she says.
While working on a plan for her school, Molefe hopes to also run a recruitment agency to train and match South Africans interested in teaching with schools in China. LONDON: Teenagers who spend more than two hours a day browsing social media without monitoring or digital literacy backgrounds may be more at risk of cyberbullying, says a UK study.
School children who were spending even a little over 120 minutes on social networking sites each day could encounter electronic communication of an intimidating or threatening nature, the study published in the BMC Public Health journal said.
Such children may experience social exclusion if private, inappropriate or humiliating rumours were shared about them if they mistakenly posted private information or met strangers online.
This was an important finding which challenged past research, said co-author Artemis Tsitsika, Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.
Earlier, it was believed that only excessive use of a social network site profile increased the risk of becoming a victim of cyberbullying.
For their study, the researchers undertook a school-based study across seven countries.– IANS