The employment system is different in China. When a Chinese pilot joins or is selected for an airline it is incumbent on him to work for them for life. The licensing system is also geared the same way because the company organises licensing and medicals and keeps the documentation. You can not leave a company if you get fed up with them as you are effectively bonded. To do so would cost a fortune to get your release documents without which you cannot work for any other company. The other side of the coin is that you are guaranteed a job for life, even if you lose your license for medical reasons. I cannot see any Western company paying 80% of captain’s basic salary for more than twenty years for doing nothing. I know of Chinese pilots in that position.
The civil aviation school in Sichuan is churning out pilots as fast as it can but the problem is captains. The old dogs of the 80s are dying out. Some of them merely because they cannot grasp ICAO English, which has now become compulsory. It is only a decade since the first recruits went overseas for training and they are now coming up to their command but they are still only a few dozen a year, meanwhile the LHS has to be filled by somebody in the foreseeable future.
Should an airline require a pilot from the other side of the world then if the living and social conditions are similar to the employee’s native environment then he would not expect much of a change in salary. Should you require that pilot to live and work in a completely different environment then you have to pay him to move. The disparity between what a national and an expatriate pilot would receive does not cause a problem in my experience. The Chinese captains I know are not short of a bob or two and neither are their wives. China, now, has not got an envy based social system so if you make a pile then good luck to you. “To be rich is glorious”, is what Deng Xiaoping said. At the end of the day they know that when they no longer require you they will show you the door.
Pilots are a commodity like anything else and will be paid whatever who ascertains as to their worth. China has a history of paying over the odds to guarantee supplies, from iron ore to oil so just because the Chinese airlines pay top dollar is does not mean that the rest of the world is going to follow suit.
Its all over now but it was among the best years of my llife.