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RE: A Chinese Nightmare: From Patient to PLA Prisoner to Indentured Laborer
You are definitely being put through the mixer over there. I must admit I was struggling to see what they fixed on you and need to go back a bit and catch up. Nothing makes common sense with us on how they think. Not allowing you to draw the money and then holding your bank card ransom. I would just get out and not come back. Pay the hospital bill loan from your employer and just go. I hope your leg is healing and maybe get it checked out back in the States.
That's the plan, though on this salary, the "pay the hospital bill loan" part is going to take a while.
I kind of think that was the point.
Step One: Find a potential employee with a skillset and credentials you need but cannot afford to pay market value to.
Step Two: Create a situation where they have no choice but to accept employment from you and owe you money.
Step Three: Make sure the salary you pay them is low enough that they cannot quickly or easily pay back the money they owe.
Under Chinese law, an employee cannot terminate his employment with a company he owes money to. If Chinese law allowed them to charge interest, they'd doubtless have done it.
It sounds like an entrapment agreement which they are known to do when dealing with countries signing up for the loan agreements (Belt road initiative). I have heard of my sons friends going over to teach English and it wasn't quite what they expected. Just get out and get yourself fixed as soon as possible.
Yeah, that's about the size of it, and I have commented extensively on FB in condemnation of their damnable debt-trap diplomacy. The thing is, I knew what it was when I signed it, but stuck in a hospital bed with a leg ripped open (unable to leave) and with one day left on a visa (unable to legally stay unless I signed), I had no choice and they knew it.
I'll give China this much credit and this much only: it wasn't always this way. When I came here for the first time in 2012, the country was slowly and awkwardly inching its way toward something that could almost be mistaken for liberty. Then Xi came along, and he brought out the worst in the country, not just politically but socially and culturally as well.
I'm working on getting the hell out as soon as I am legally able to do so.
I hadn't realized it had changed with him coming in. It is though greed has taken over and they think people are dumb enough to fall for it. I gather you had no choice and was just a case of bad luck. Get better soon and hope everything passes by quickly.