I have just read the above from Americanzombie. I am working here in China for Juneyao Airlines via Smile Aviation. All that AZ says about OK is exactly the same as for my company/agency. When I joined I was told that I would be online, full salary, within 2-3 months of arrival. Note that prior to arrival I had already done the ATP, medical, etc.
In reality, it took almost 1 year of completely bull##it "training" to reach that goal. The reality was that they had enough Captains at that time, but knew more would be needed in the future. Therefore, leave the new ones on the backboiler on training pay until required.
Also, as AZ says, once you are signed on to an airline here in China, you are stuck with them. So if they lie to you and don't live up to promises, the options are you leave (and never use your CAAC license again) or stick it out. The only reason I opted for the second option was that, by the time I realized what these people were up to, I had already invested a lot of time, money and energy to the contract. Had I known nearer the start, I would have bailed early and never come back (as a friend of mine did when he saw what I had gone through).
If coming to China on contract, all one needs to remember is this - when dealing with the Chinese, if theirs lips are moving there is a good chance they are lying.