Today in 2015, China is still booming and creating both millions of jobs – and hundreds of scams. It is mostly foreigners that crave the jobs, and thus are targeted for the scams. Still over a million job seekers are not deterred every year. About one-third of them will be swindled as they seek an internship in China. In a recent 2014 CSP survey, 22% of China interns were happy and satisfied with their experience, and most because almost all of them, found their own internships on their own – for free. The remaining 88% that were dissatisfied for two different reasons… 29% were disenchanted with the crowded and polluted cities of Beijing and Shanghai, and the other 59% were really ticked off with the private company that brought them to China, and the way it was done – with deception.
While getting a legitimate China job internship can be helpful to launching your international career, most of them are never advertised – at least not the real ones. You will however see dozens of ads popping up all over your screen from Google AdWords and various job sites as soon as you begin your online search for “China Job Internships”. The problem is that 95% of these appealing ads are bait for various scams based in China or the U.K, and they are spammed all over the internet. Some ads are even fronts for identity thieves that victimize about 500 foreign visitors to China every month.
These scams all have three things in common:
1) They want you to pay a large fee to obtain an internship for you on your behalf.
2) They all have amazing and impressive websites full of great reviews and testimonials.
3) They sell you a dream of a great international job at the close of your internship or great “international experience” that looks great on your resume. “Great” is how they make it all sound.
It is easy to take the bait – I did so myself. And that is how I learned the truth about a very sleazy and unethical world of boiler-room call centers filled with smooth-talking scam artists that are basically fishing for suckers.
I met a former employee of company called “GetIn2China” which had to later change its name for legal reasons to Gi2C. This girl told me more than I really wanted to know after we became friends and I realized I was never going to get a refund. She recently left the company BTW. But what I got out of my ordeal was just one very expensive lesson…
“The real and legitimate China job internships are all 100% FREE and you do not need to find, nor obtain them through any third party company. You get them directly from the HR offices of over a hundred international companies operating in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou.”
But once you take the bait from one of those catchy scam ads it is hard to resist their sales pitch. Like me you will believe all the fake testimonials and you will think that a five or seven year old company that was mentioned in the newspaper or on TV just has to be legitimate. In reality, BIG does not mean best – or even legitimate in China.
The “Refundable Deposits” they ask for come in by the hundreds every week, but none are ever returned. The bogus companies pay their rent and salaries with these deposits which total almost $20,000 a week. When you are 3,000 miles away in Europe or Australia, how are you going to get your deposit back from China without going there to file a police report? About 50% of their million dollar income comes from these deposits.
If you do follow through with the clever scheme you will spend an average of $8,000 by the time you leave China on your plane tickets, meals, apartment, and of course the largest expense – their “placement & orientation fee” that ranges from $1,200 to $4,999. Is this a good value? Well look at what you have to show for it all after 90 days: A brief exposure to an amazing country and a piece of paper that says you are officially a “China Intern”. Is that worth even $5,000 to you?
During the last 90 days you were used, abused, and exploited. You were used to make coffee, copies, deliveries and telephone calls. Maybe you were asked to paint an office, be a chauffeur, or translate. As a woman you probably were subjected to sexual harassment so often that you actually got used to it. China is still a man’s world – or at least the men still think so. In subways packed like sardine cans I was groped more than once. Less than 2% of these internships result in any job offers. To the Chinese companies you are free labor and you are treated accordingly.
If however you find your own legitimate internship directly through the companies like Microsoft, HP, General Electric, Pfizer, etc, their HR staff will never lie to you and tell you right up-front what the outcome of your successful internship might be. There are no fees, no abuses, and no BS. Paying money to work for peanuts in an overseas internship is bad enough, but giving false hopes for a new future abroad to young university graduates is super low IMO.
The one good thing you can be assured of, is that if you network and and mingle with other expats while you are in China, you will make great friends and contacts, and you have about a 70% chance of finding employment on your own. This is why most expats who were swindled by the internship scammers don’t scream louder. Even though we were clearly cheated, most of us meet a partner or find a job here on our own and make our own happy endings.
If you want to know about a specific company in China, you can make free inquiries at admin@chinascampatrol.org
You can also just google “China Internship Scams” and if you want to know about the company that screwed me out of a small fortune, you can read the below:
By the way, in China today, unpaid internships are no longer legal unless you are part of a registered student exchange program and you must complete a foreign internship in order to graduate. Minimum payment by law for Chinese interns is now 2,000 rmb per month and they cannot exceed 90 days.
China Internship Directory 