> From friends living their, it's impossible to actually strictly follow what's on the books, particularly for foreigners.

Could you give an example of laws that your friends found impossible to follow? If they don't speak Chinese, that would explain it, because obviously you first need to understand what the law says before you can comply.

That's not the case.

Check https://www.chinalawblog.com/ for some examples if you want to.

Easy ones are:

You can be held criminally liable for mistakes your employer makes, since you have no control over and likely no knowledge of what "illegal" actions your employer might be taking, there is no way to comply with the law.

If you sell something to a Chinese company and they decide that they aren't satisfied with your product (maybe they just don't want to pay), you can be charged with a crime for selling "defective" products.

Is there any country where it is not somewhat common for foreigners to work there illegally without being punished, and also for those foreign workers to occasionally get caught and deported for it?

That's not my point. The point is that in a country like China following the law as written is not a defense, and it's likely not even possible.

Your best bet is to keep your head down and follow common practices.

Is your point that her failure to comply with work visa rules was actually the right thing to do, and thus her punishment for it is unfair?

Chinese work visa rules contain requirements like you must do P and you can’t do P. Compliance is impossible given the contradiction. Instead, you need to go with the flow like everyone else, China is not a rule of law country, they will just use the law on you if they don’t like you (and given the way the laws are written, you are necessarily breaking something).

It is also important to read sources like https://www.chinalawblog.com if you want to survive in China long term.

I can’t find a definitive answer of exactly what she was accused of, but it sounds like she just didn’t have a work permit at all. I doubt there’s a requirement to not have a permit to work.

I don't know the specifics of this case either, but people are jailed and deported regularly for mistakes made by their employer that they didn't and couldn't have known about.

However, I was never talking about this case in particular. I was talking about the assumption that if you just follow the law as written you'll be fine.

You have no individual rights while in China, and the law is intentionally vague and arbitrarily enforced. This isn't an accident--the system is designed so that anyone can be prosecuted if the government decides it's necessary. If you keep your head down and do what everyone else is doing, statistically you'll probably be fine. However, as a foreigner living in China, whether you break the law isn't up to you.

If a company decides they didn't like the product or service you provide and accuses you of selling defective goods, you can be criminally charged and convicted. If a Chinese citizen overcharges you and you don't want to pay, you can be criminally charged and convicted.

Read the China law blog. If you are an English teacher, you might think you have a proper work permit when your employer has done something really dodgy. They do that because they can’t hire foreign teachers properly, and everyone was just expected to break the rules in the past.

For high paid high tech workers this isn’t much of a problem, we got proper work permits, I think.

I wouldn't be surprised if her employer tricked her into thinking she had the proper permit, as you suggest. I don't see how that matters. I'm sure that sort of thing happens all over the place. The sort of people who would hire workers illegally are also the sort of people who would lie to them and say it's all legal.

Work without authorization, get caught, get arrested and deported. Happens every day in countries all over the world. I don't see anything even remotely remarkable about this case.

It happens enough in China that it’s a common occurrence. Enforcement of Chinese law makes the employee culpable, not the employer, so the employers see no reason to stop doing that to each new crop of naive foreigners.

So, this one incident isn’t unusual or remarkable and certainly isn’t a reason to avoid tourism in the country.

Tourists won’t have many problems in China (beyond air pollution of course); rule of law wouldn’t be much of an issue to them, you aren’t really living there. Workers on the other hand.....