Your observations are all generally correct, however there are the rare exceptions. In 2007 we were a bunch of pilots being laid off by a European flagcarrier (ok we were a spoiled bunch but not too much) . We went looking for jobs and found some in India , in Namibia in Turkey and so on. I was in a smallish group looking for parttime job. We acted as a group with one spokesperson doing the contract"bargaining". We finally got lucky (ca 6 months it took us) and were employed by a Chinese state airline(45hours p.m.). 12 days of the month belonged to the company , the rest belonged to us.Pay nothing special but ok as it was after tax (ca4k€). Was too good to be true and 2008 they held us but 2009 they let us go( A340 flight hours were reduced due to the downturn ). Again on the search we got another chinese contract but this time we had to use a contractor. After the initial full time contract we are now on a 70% contract( 55h/14 days free of duty in Europe p.m.). But only our minifleet(3a/c) has this contract the expats on the other fleet fly 880 respectively 770 hours per year.
Now I would not say this is my dreamjob, working in China has its drawbacks
and I saw many good pilots who could or would not stay due to various reasons( many of which I understand).
My reasoning: By acting as a group we gained respect and some clout. We were even able to change some practices which were too hard to digest.
We will not change the system thats for sure.
We were lucky but we were also persistent where it counted.
Good luck for all of you