Hi, No, you don’t need to be a native English speaker to receive a Foreign Experts Certificate. You can be a native Japanese speaker – and receive a Foreign Experts Certificate. But if a school employs you as an English teacher – you need to be a native English speaker to receive the Foreign Experts Certificate.
This makes a lot of sense and is actually logical. I figure in the case of English teachers from non-English speaking countries they would just neglect to complete all the necessary paperwork to get the right kind of visa. Although I imagine the number of Bulgarian and Romanian English teachers in Chengdu has to be going down with more and more scrutiny being put on the legality of things like this.