Obviously US and UK are not developed.

I'm ready to forgive anyone who's been to Stoke or Hull that mistake.

"Obviously US and UK are not developed."

Maybe those people from Anyang read The Economist:
www.economist.com/[...]

[TL;DR]:
US- 16th place, UK 27th place to be born today...

Even Mexico, Slovakia, and Slovenia are on the top 40 list, but PRC #49 (below Cuba? OMG!) only HK is higher up.

I suppose not everyone can live in a Tier One city.

"And SO many other countries where english is an officiel language !!
And all the rest, so many europeens speak a stunning english !!
Do chinese schools understand that the world is not America !
No offence for the States, but is it really such a great model to follow !"

I think if you're going to start a thread about English competency, you should definitely run it through spell and grammar check before you press "Post"...especially if you're a non-native speaker. Or maybe I'm falling into a troll trap...

I'm an American who's been teaching in China for almost 5 years and I definitely think British English is easier for my students to grasp for two reasons: 1) The phonetics in BE are more similar to Chinese (for example, the final "r"), and 2) Most university students have been fed a steady diet of bastardized, yet British, English from their local middle school teachers on. UK education got here first, I'm guessing via Hong Kong in the early days of the grand opening.

I have no problem with job postings that are honest about who and what they want. If a school wants Brits, as an American, I'm not offended. I'd love to work in the EU, but I ain't got me no UK passport. But I am patient with love...

Thanks for sharing your views on that !
@ laotou : I like your post but i reckon that the political issues you were talking about are not the privilege of the US. Europeens government and actualy the rest of the world as well try to do the same. However i agree completly with you on that, America should get an award for the best "how to start a war" !
American is a powerful partner of china but they deal together for 14% of their external commercial balance, so 85% are the rest of the world, so different languages or different english accents.
@geeze : Also, for those who said that amercian english is easier... well i work with a girl from Mississippi, and her accent his definitely trickier than an italian accent for instance !!
I think China is a bit jealous of America, the best friend enemy.

And the vast majority of chinese have low education, so they just "eat" what they see on TV, so, like people said above, for chinese parents "white = americans", as much as "japanese = evil", "indian = dirty", "french = romantic", "jews = smart and stingy", "italy = pizza", ... i heard all these things !
and for black people... my school said once : "we cant afford to have a black teacher, kids and parents will be scared."
BUT, to counterbalance, i still think chinese are more open to foreigners than in many other countries.
@ekoorbr : you're right, but i can't help thinking "what a waste of money" for them to send their kids their !!
(i met a girl who spend 2 years in the states, uni in Missouri, she barely interacted with locals, so she came back with an embarrassing poor english !! Now she lives in china working for a 4k yuan/month salary... what a waste of time and money)

@geezer
You have your experiences, I have mine. Just sharing mine. You obviously deal with a higher strata of human beings. How nice for you, sucks to be me. As for the off-topic anti-USA rant - I'm VERY pro-American - but deeply disenfranchised by the last two decades of leadership and worse - the fact that we voted these guys (not limited to US Presidents) and their ilk into office.

As for education - I'm very pro-American when it comes to sending students to the USA for education - the US economy can DEFINITELY use the income.

As for the whitey stuff - asian americans can similarly suffer from reverse discrimination living, studying, and working in the USA - ESPECIALLY as China becomes stronger and stronger. The USA's anti China rhetoric and propaganda is kicking into high gear...wait for it. That creates a potential hazard or threat to Chinese tourists and students - bigotry, hate crimes - all pervasively present in abundance.

Kunming and Yunnan in general is still a backwoods hick province, despite the façades of civilization. While many of you hang with the better educated, that only represents a small portion of the general population at large. Many of the schools advertising for whitey are selling an image as opposed to substance - and that's perhaps @william15's root source of irritation. He's met the prevalent and pervasive Chinese culture of form over function.

Regretful - but c'est la vie.

@ laotou =
Smart post :)

about the "sea turtles" : nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/education/behind-the-boom-in-chinese-students-at-u-s-colleges-20121113

Final (in your dreams) note - if you REALLY want to speak english like MOST of the people in the world - then send your kids to India - cuz there are more people in India who speak English than anywhere else in the world!!...a verbatim quote from a former staff in retort/response to an ingrate manager's extraordinarily rude and racist comment about his English being incomprehensible (it was said in an overtly offensive manner - but I understand his frustration).

For all you American bashers out there, the answer is simple.
You get what you pay for. Simple as that.