On July 24, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping banned for-profit tutoring on core school subjects. I believe that such a move is related to the CCP’s strategic plan for China’s future education. Since the Mao Zedong era, the CCP has been fully aware that education pertains to its future successors.
There are different views on the collective clampdown on the off-campus tutoring industry in China. Chinese state media claim that it was to reduce parents’ financial burden in order to encourage them to raise more children, which would help solve the population crisis. Netizens see it as a crackdown on private capital, a move to further indoctrinate CCP ideology when “Xi Jinping thought” is being added to the national curriculum.
CCP’s Strategic Adjustments in Education
In China, the entire education system—from elementary schools to universities—has been and must be fully controlled by the CCP.It appears that the following major factors have prompted the CCP to make strategic adjustments on education.
Since September 1999, the regime has been in high gear to expand its higher education industry, allowing a majority of colleges and universities to significantly increase their enrollment by implementing a fee-based admission system.
In the first few years, it appeared to be a win-win situation for all. Colleges and universities, large and small, suddenly found a new source of massive funding that kept on growing. Faculty and staff enjoyed huge boosts in their salaries and benefits improved. The authorities were delighted as if a brand new industry had been identified to foster economic growth. Many applicants who would have been disqualified for college under the original scholarship-based elite education system now had access to college classrooms that were once closed to them.
However, in 2003 when Beijing welcomed its first group of college graduates, many of them had a difficult time getting a job, according to Chinese media.
There weren’t enough employment opportunities when a large number of college graduates suddenly flooded the job market. While many people in China are illiterate or semiliterate, the Chinese regime inadvertently created for itself another problem of having an excess number of graduates whose skills were misaligned with market demand. This phenomenon is not seen in other developing countries.
To address the problem, the CCP in 2005 announced a policy that would “vigorously develop vocational education”—the goal was to help align college graduates’ skill sets with the job market.
But since then, the regime has been too busy with political struggles and has not fully implemented the policy that could benefit millions of young graduates in the future. As a result, mass unemployment of second and third-tier college graduates continues to this day.
Second, the ongoing trade war with the United States, along with the reality of China’s failed education system, catches up with the CCP.
Since former President Donald Trump left the White House, Beijing has faced two new realities.
First, the CCP has realized the importance of elite education and cultivating talent. Three significant events contributed to this realization: 1) Western countries, most notably the United States, banned the use of Huawei equipment in their 5G networks; 2) the CCP needed to rely on other countries for chip supplies; 3) Beijing’s “Thousand Talents Program” has been called out by the international community for engaging in espionage and theft of intellectual property.
Second, there has been a disconnect between what the job market needs and what many college graduates are trained to do. In China, for example, foreign trade companies face difficulties finding technically qualified candidates to fill open positions and constantly encounter labor shortages at their assembly lines, while unemployed college and secondary technical school graduates are unwilling to take those laborious jobs.
In my opinion, solving such problems requires China to learn from the German “streaming system” of education, starting with high school, and cultivate talents through a mature vocational education system.
Threat to the Regime
A recent article from Chinese news portal QQ, titled, “Behind the Central Authority’s Move: Shocking Data on Off-Campus Tutoring Industry,” reveals information that speaks volumes about why Beijing cracked down on the thriving industry.For example, total sales for the off-campus tutoring market in China have reached more than $215 billion while the United States, the top education powerhouse, has only about $10 billion in this sector. In 2020, total sales of all training institutions for K–12 education in Japan had only $4.2 billion.
In 2020 alone, as much as $10 billion of venture capital poured into China’s tutoring sector, providing off-campus services on subjects such as math, language skills, and music at all K–12 levels.
According to the listing prospectus of New Oriental Education & Technology Group, the total revenue from the students who were enrolled for its K–12 tutoring programs nationwide increased from $31 million in 2015 to $50 million in 2019.
Furthermore, as reported by Hurun’s Global Education Rich List 2020, 7 of the top 10 education companies with the highest market value in the world are from China. Their businesses are focused on test prep, home tutoring, online education, language training, among other things.
The CCP would not allow its authority to be challenged. From its point of view, the remarkable expansion of China’s tutoring industry has become a threat not only to the state-run monopolistic education system, but also to the survival of the communist regime. Needless to say, Beijing would no longer allow private capital, especially foreign capital, to invest in this industry that has an enormous output value and a bearing on the foundation of the nation and the existence of the regime.
