“I am leaving because I can no longer afford to stay.”
A third party sent ExpatRights a two-page farewell signed “Coach Christopher Chua (Chris)” and a three-page reply signed “Roro.” We could not verify who first circulated the files, whether they changed hands before reaching us, or whether either account is complete.
Chua's accusation is brutal. He says Robinson Hao kept him coaching full-time through four entries on business visas, delayed his work authorization, then removed his guaranteed base pay when he could no longer absorb the uncertainty.
Roro's response denies exploitation and says Chua was paid for every hour. It confirms that business visas came first and exits and re-entry happened repeatedly; it also claims a separate company entity was later created to pursue a work visa.
No contract, visa page, work permit or payroll record came with the letters. These are serious, named allegations—not findings. What public records do establish is that Coach Chris, Robinson Hao and FLTRP are not random names thrown together in an anonymous tip.
The Letter Behind The Trophies
Chua says he moved to Shanghai and began working full-time in August 2025. He describes the following year as the greatest stretch of his professional life: drills, case files, practice rounds, championships and students selected for elite teams.
Then comes the sentence that blows the trophy cabinet open.
“I am leaving because I can no longer afford to stay.”
After probation, Chua says he repeatedly asked Hao to approve his work-visa process. Instead, he says, he entered China four times on 30- or 60-day business visas, leaving for the Philippines whenever one expired. One attempt to resolve his status took him to Beijing and failed.
According to the letter, a work visa finally arrived in April 2026 and was due to expire in October. Chua says he was then told Hao would not pay to renew it.
Then The Salary Floor Became A Trapdoor
Chua says he agreed to a minimum monthly salary when he was hired. In practice, he alleges, ordinary contracted duties rarely reached that floor, forcing him to accept additional work month after month. Students sometimes received messages at three or four in the morning.
Then, he says, the floor disappeared. Chua alleges Hao removed his base pay and replaced it with an arrangement “that guarantees nothing,” citing company finances.
The image proves that the accusation appears in the supplied letter. It does not prove the accusation is true. But the human claim is unmistakable: Chua says the work he loved had become financially impossible to continue.
Management Says Every Hour Was Paid
The reply signed Roro tells a sharply different story. It says Chua had a base monthly salary, earned extra income for every additional coaching hour and consistently took home more than the base amount.
Roro says management paid visa fees and flights for the repeated exits, hired three agencies, and “set up a separate company entity” to make a work-visa application possible. The response says renewal costs eventually became too high to keep absorbing.
It denies that Chua was exploited, illegally underpaid or treated as disposable. It says his visa was handled properly.
The two letters collide on blame and money. Yet they agree on an extraordinary spine of facts: Chua initially coached while entering on business visas, left and returned repeatedly, obtained a work visa later, and eventually lost management support for renewal.
They also agree that he was an excellent coach. The missing records—not the rhetoric—would show what he was promised, what he received, and which entity employed him.
This Was Not A Tiny Backroom Operation
The farewell came without a contract. The public trail did not.
The 2025 FLTRP Speech and Debate Invitational Shanghai lists Christopher Chua in core adjudication and FLTRP as the organizer. The World Schools Debating Championships directory lists Robinson Hao as FLTRP's debate contact, using an @fltrp.com address.
FLTRP reported RMB 2.713 billion in revenue for 2020. In June 2026, it said digital products generated more than 40% of its revenue. Its own social-responsibility page presents debate competitions as part of its public-welfare mission.
This was a large education publisher publicly celebrating debate—not a nameless one-room academy.
Those records do not prove FLTRP employed Chua or controlled GDP. They do establish that both men were publicly visible in the same FLTRP debate ecosystem. The unanswered question is which entity put Chua to work, paid him and sponsored his permit.
His Goodbye Did Not Arrive Alone
Two other supplied posts announce departures from GDP-related work. One describes five formative years built around GDP and says the writer's recent work and psychological condition had become unstable. Another cites a mismatch between company needs and personal career expectations.
The tipster characterized those departures as a protest. The posts themselves do not. They do not corroborate Chua's visa or pay allegations, but they show that his departure appeared amid wider staff movement.
Reddit Has Heard This Story Before
None of the accounts below concerns FLTRP or GDP. None proves Chua's allegations. But the pressure they describe is grimly familiar.
On r/chinalife, u/Neither-Movie8053 said a kindergarten offered a new contract with lower pay while release papers and an expiring residence permit hung over the exit. The teacher had already accepted one RMB 2,000 pay cut.
“being a good boy just made them think it was easy to keep trying to cut my salary after accepting one.”
In the same thread, u/_BreadBoy said an old school delayed paperwork until the teacher's visa expired, forcing a departure from China and a new application from abroad.
Another teacher, u/strictlylogical-, described months of missed wages at a bilingual school: “there's no assurance we'll receive our salaries.” An update said staff finally received the money after almost eight months.
Then there is u/CreativeAd2980, a young Moroccan employee in Guangzhou. The writer said visa-agent fees were deducted from the first two salaries, a contracted commission was cut from 2% to 0.8%, and the company sponsored the visa. Supporting a sister and a sick cat, the writer was no longer sure there would be enough money to fly home as promised.
Different employers. Different jobs. Anonymous accounts. Not corroboration—just other foreigners describing the same vise: salary on one side, immigration status on the other, and the price of leaving in between.
What The Letters Still Cannot Prove
Official Shanghai guidance says foreigners need proper authorization for paid work. The supplied accounts agree that business visas came first, but without the contract, visa pages, permit records and named sponsoring entity, ExpatRights cannot conclude that FLTRP or Hao illegally hired Chua, forced him to work or withheld wages.
The Last Thing Coach Chris Offered Was Help
Chua did not end his farewell by asking students to choose sides. He offered case feedback, recommendation letters, university advice or simply someone to talk to. The offer, he wrote, had no expiry date.
Roro's response also promised the students would not be abandoned. On that, at least, the two letters agree.
Chua's final line was: “Thank you for the best work I've ever done.”
The trophies remain. Coach Chris has left. And the contract, permit, payroll and unnamed company behind “GDP” have still not been shown.
Sources and status: two signed PDFs and six screenshots supplied to ExpatRights, plus the public records and Reddit posts linked above, checked on August 27, 2026. The supplied files establish that the allegations and denials were written; their provenance and disputed claims remain unverified.
Public records corroborate Chua's debate role and Hao's public FLTRP connection, not Chua's employer or the identity of GDP. The Reddit accounts are anonymous, unrelated anecdotes—not corroboration. No party was contacted. Draft only; no publication or WeChat action has been taken.