During my annual police dance where (village, town, and city) for residence permit renewal, I tried to make a further inquiry at the bureau of naughty foreigner control. There were some new faces behind the counter, so I hoped they might have tripped over some new information.
I was told that the last (only?) green card via marriage in Dongguan was issued about 10 years ago. They seemed to believe that getting such a green card today would be impossible.
China now has recently fully integrated all the visa, greencard, and immigration functions into a centralized Immigration Bureau. I personally don't see how that, in conjunction with reports of increasing numbers of green cards being issued nationwide can correlate to "impossible."
What's very frustrating is how many news articles on the subject give vague descriptions and also readily mix up the concepts of green card, honorary citizenship, and actual citizenship. Getting useful facts isn't easy when those writing and editing the stories don't seem to know very much about the topics the stories are about.
It's been 2 years, 1 month, and 9 days since I applied. I'm still hopefully awaiting news of success.