Illustration: Lu Ting/GT

There's billions of bullion in China. That's why an entire generation of young students from around the world are shoring here. There's a problem that no one has told them. They're too late. It's China's money, not theirs.

Take Marcus, a German MBA student living near Zhongtan Road, Putuo district. He arrived in Shanghai, interned and wanted to get a high-paying engineer job. He spent two years learning Chinese too. Now, he has to move out of his flat because he cannot get a job with a legitimate visa. To make ends meet, he took a job illegally at an English training center. But the new visa laws are in force and the manager let him go.

He might have spoken with Edward Hu before making such an egregious error. Sure, the new visa laws are fuzzy for those not in the know. But Hu is in the know as the deputy general manager of a local HR company.

Presenting at a recent Wednesday night event on the topic of China's new visa rules, Hu put the policy into context.

"We have millions of young Chinese graduates entering the workforce, so these new laws help them in keeping only qualified people here," Hu told us. "They are meant to get the bad workers out who do not have qualifications, overstay or use their visas improperly."

Hu continued, "There have been cases of IELTS testing centers employing people who were on tourist visas. In some cases, these training centers have had serious sex scandals. These new laws give better oversight."

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Last week I went into one of these training centers. They put me into a room for orientation about their school. There were four other people. One was an American, a very odd fellow with worrisome social skills. I wouldn't leave a child alone with him for a minute. I felt the same way about the senior citizen from Israel who was there, a wizened man with a strange leer. The woman from Italy seemed nice but was not a native speaker. Nor was the bearded Lithuanian who was there for full-time teaching. They were all offered positions.

One wonders how these laws will punish schools like this given the gravity of the English language requirements of the gaokao (national college entrance exam) and demand for English training, especially for new Chinese graduates who need to compete globally. 

One way to solve this looming labor conundrum would be to have a national certificate for teaching in China. Something ironclad with real teeth that comes with a special ID card given only to those who have undergone a thorough background check. 

Something like this would clean up the teaching market, which seems to reside at the crux of the current visa problems facing the country.

This current visa problem began right after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, says Hu. "After the Olympics there was a flood of immigrants from all over the world. Most poured into Shanghai and Beijing, but also elsewhere in the country. We did not expect this so the new policies are trying to curb it."

Of course, visa problems were already an issue in the months leading up to the Olympics - with a campaign to weed out drug dealers, prostitutes and terrorists. That campaign incidentally spurred an illegal visa market, which accelerated in profits in the wake of the financial crisis, Hu explained.

So, what will happen next?

Hu forecasts a season of increased alertness and attention to training centers.

As for new Chinese graduates entering the workforce, if they strike out at first, they need not worry. There will still be legions of foreign graduate students hungry to teach them private English lessons far away from the red tape of the English schools and the poor security forces who now have to monitor them.