@flengs
I'm sad to say that but don't worry to much about the Visa. There is still plenty of gray area to work with on a business Visa.

plus @Yuantongsi discribed it perfectly.

@Ocean since I don't want to stirr anything up, I willl just say; I am (genuinly) happy for you, that you got your work Visa for the position as foreign English teacher. Because they are "EXTREMELY" rare and I am glad for Roberts and Shane that they have the status to aplly/issue them. They seem like nice CEO'a and managers there.

Plus the previous mentioned idea about fake diplomas, you might get away with it working a teaching gig for a few month but if you are looking into a career as teacher and you ever get caught,..."Good Bye career".

They are very easy to detect and if you check how many "Mills" are offering them, it's just a question of time until it's being stopped.

Imagine what happens, when all those Prof's and Doctor's have a little scratch on their ego.

Great. So I could work in my schools and get away with a story carrying a business visa that I acquired in some kind of outside agency. Talking about it, is getting a business visa without some kind of major monetary investment possible?

A business visa 'F' is for doing business, that is you have come to China to do business. Strictly speaking the maximum stay on any one visit is 60 day. Usually an 'F' visa is only issued for 6 months in the first instance (although there are exceptions). On an 'F' visa you should be paid outside of China, and be seconded here on business.

On and 'F' visa there is no legal mechanism for you to pay tax, as employment is illegal.
If you are working on an 'F' visa and you are having tax and insurance deducted, the money is going into your employer's pocket, or someone elses.
To be clear, you cannot be legally employed by a Chinese company on a business 'F' visa. This is one of the loopholes closed in the changes to the law a few years back (2009 I think).

@Dazzer
you are right, having a business visa you are not entitled to a salary or financial rewards for your services. And I didn't want to sound like it's a good thing to avoid having the needed documentation to work in China.

If you can, you should get a work Visa, of course. But not everyone can, plus my point is and was;

That having a bogus work visa for a position you are not holding, is as illegal as having the wrong Visa. It is this agency&school produced offer of false safety that is annoying becasue teachers can't see and seldomly know what they are registered for.

Even though the emp;oyer is responsible a whole noghtmare can rain down on the staff and the company if the taxation officers knock on your door.

so if a cop that really want's to bust you sees one person with a business visa and another with a work visa working in a conpany that is not registered to employ foreign teachers. both teachers are equally screwed and will be deported (if court decides).

So here comes the questions does it matter, which insufficient Visa you're holding?

Furthermore there are legal ways to get paid without work visa. as in any country of the world. although it's taxed, but i never had problems with that. I'm a pro tax guy but not alwasy agreeing how it's spend.

Dudeson's "Even though the emp;oyer (SIC) is responsible a whole noghtmare(SIC) can rain down on the staff and the company if the taxation officers knock on your door."

I seriously doubt anyone other than the passport holder is responsible for the status of visas. Twice in 11 years I was illegal. Both times the school failed to perform a function schools usually perform on behalf of teachers. Both times I checked and asked the right questions but was lied to by the persons who had failed. The first time, the guy failed to convert Z visas of several teachers then tried to BS the PSB. I found out when the cops knocked on my door and informed me I was going to be deported. The second time, the school failed to do the temporary residence registration. I found out only when I was required to sign a confession admitting my guilt in not registering at the local PSB office.

I suggest that it is highly unlikely you would want to go to any court as a violator of Chinese law as the conviction rate is about 98% in China. I am constantly amazed that many foreigners living and working in China have the impression the Chinese legal system conveys the same rights and protections found in English speaking countries.

Lastly, on topic, I find it very unimpressive that those who do not hold legitimate degrees, in any discipline, go to great lengths in insisting any degree is of little value. Especially when such self described educators are, in effect, arguing education is of little value.

@Geezer
Right you are responisible for having a Visa in your passport, but you work for a company, they are responsible. What I ment is that when the cops walk in and check your Visa and don't see a work visa in there, they won't fine you or deport you. What you have is a expiration problem which I had as well, thanks to a bad employer fortunately just once. It's a different story. Sure a lot of employers are jerks and don't care if you get deported or not.

About my spelling mistakes....I was too tired and too little bothered to correct? :D

About Degrees...hm they are completely worthless unless you study medicine or natural science or whatnot. But in education they are only to clean your behind with.

I have a valid teaching certificate it took 9 month to get it and it outbeats any teacher I have met in terms of methodology and didactics.

You spend 4 years in your life reading books about how teaching works according to it you discuss all that has happened and that may happen and in the classroom they new teachers have to start from scratch it takes them one to two years to become just indipendent individuals. So please tell me what is the point of that. They can discuss Maslows ideas to the point where you want to kill your self. But again we are talking about the agants of knowledge here, Yeah the degree helps in getting a visa but is it necessary to have a degre in everything .."NO" but schools worldwise tell you, that so you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for s slip of papers . LAst time I checked the Universities weren't made for that.

Only thing I see coming out of it. Lot of arogance and ignorance.
OF course you don;t need a degree to be a great profesional...And it's good that way, helps to keep arrogant academics at bay..

Again no offence I think to have one is good but needing one...I don;t think so.

Anybody who starts spouting off about Maslow, in relation to teaching, discredits themself. This also applies to the last poster who used it.

With all the mistakes made by Dudeson - - how can he call himself a teacher (or she and herself if applies)!!

I would have thought that knowledge garnered from further study would be the path to cure ignorance, not it.
To hold oneself up as better than others, even those who hold higher degrees than onself, could be considered arrogant.

@flengs
Unless you're an exceptionally well connected scion - the solution to your initial question would be - get the school to give you a student visa and then "wink wink nudge nudge" pay you to teach - although you run the significant risk of contract breach, abuse, etc. Other alternatives are ketchy dicey internet degrees. Some will even provide backup transcripts AND verification - the joys of virtual offices abound.

@tigertiger
Actually, the more I learn, the more I realize just how ignorant I am. What's with that?

@those bemoaning the degree requirement
While degrees are neither a guarantee of social grace nor common sense - they nevertheless serve as a general benchmark for academic excellence. While it may be true that a degree (or Nobel Prize) is no guarantee of teaching excellence - it's a safer bet than filtering through the chaff to find that rare non-degreed pearl. And more bluntly, the piece of wood tasked with hiring teachers is more concerned with filling quota based on a formula (which includes a college degree) than with the quality of the instructor. Foreign teachers tend to be high churn - this is generally NOT a long-term career - but can serve as a launch pad for other things (such as opening up your own English teaching academy and pilfering your employer's clientele).

Some pay more attention to statistics, so - formulating utterly baseless, statistically unfounded speculative garbage - if talented non-degreed teachers make up roughly 2% of the population of a labor pool - an employer would have to filter 100 candidates just to find those two (2) non-degreed candidates with genuine teaching talent, so looking at things from an employers perspective (and based on totally unfounded and baseless statistics), bemoaning the degree requirement is akin to spitting into the wind, which is why I alluded to internet degrees and transcripts - just help the block of wood check off the university degree checkbox and move "onwards and upwards".