The best China News & Insight from the web in one place.

Sinosolutions

Resources

Fitness training for youngsters gains steam in China.

Fitness training for youngsters gains steam in China.

Specialised kids’ fitness training centres are set to be in high demand in Chinese cities following the raft of new education policies that were introduced from 2020 onwards.

 

The kids’ fitness industry started in 2017 but only gained momentum recently. A 50% year-on-year increase was noticed by one owner of a kids’ fitness centre in Hohhot in Inner Mongolia during the most recent winter vacation and he also noticed several new centres popping up in the neighbouring area in the span of two weeks. The kids’ fitness training market in China is expected to exceed 130 billion RMB (18.7 billion USD) in 2023, according to Duojing Educational Research Institute.

 

 

Fitness training for young people has become a top government priority in recent years due to concerns about the “feminisation” of boys in China, which many blame on the importing of Korean pop culture, called the “Korean Wave”.

 

In 2020, China’s Ministry of Education issued a notice calling for the “prevention of the feminisation of male youth”, largely through the strengthening of physical education provision in schools. Whilst the move initially stirred some controversy, it was later explained by the government that “masculinity” was not about gender stereotyping, claiming that the term encapsulates a range of admirable qualities all youth should strive for.

 

During the pandemic the concept of kids’ fitness took root in the minds of parents, many of whom witnessed the detrimental impact of at-home schooling on the mental health of their children. As of 2021 private tutoring companies, a dominant feature of education in urban China, were also banned to curb the excessive pressure the industry placed on parents and children. Fitness classes are the perfect option for middle class parents with cash to spare, helping to assuage health concerns at the same time as filling the gap left by the shutting of tutoring businesses.

 

Practitioners within this burgeoning field are now striving for standardisation so that kids’ fitness training can earn greater recognition and trust among parents across the country. Looking to the future, the head of a kids fitness centre in Inner Mongolia said “We will create exclusive profiles for each child, regularly monitor the child’s fitness, and share data on the effectiveness of the program so that the child’s progress can be seen at a glance.”

 

 


 

 

New rules have China private education...

New rules have China private education firms in a fix.

China’s private education companies had for years been the darlings of investors from New York to Shanghai, building a $100 billion industry on the promise of the world’s largest and arguably most-competitive schooling system. Then they got caught up in the Chinese government’s sweeping efforts to rein in the country’s technology giants, with a regulatory clampdown unveiled in July after months of rumbling that threatens to put an end to years of out-sized growth. The industry’s rise -- and future -- hinges on two of the most powerful and anxiety-inducing forces in China today: the pursuit of wealth and status, and the Communist Party’s enduring obsession with maintaining social order.

 

 

1. How did tutoring become so popular?

Blame it on the Gaokao: the national college admission test, administered in June, that decides which universities one can attend and thereby determining the fates of millions. It’s considered a playing-field leveler for those aspiring to move up the social ladder. Only 1.9% of nearly 11 million students who sat for the Gaokao in 2020 made it to a top-tier institution like Peking, Fudan or Tsinghua universities. Preparations begin many years before, in some cases as early as pre-school, as parents try to give their children every possible edge. Ironically, years of government entreaties to lessen the burden of homework may have driven anxious parents to private companies. After-school tutoring flourished, supplemented by online classes that in turn exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic. China’s market for private tutoring was expected to almost double to 1.17 trillion yuan ($183 billion) in 2023, from 619.1 billion yuan in 2019, according to Macquarie Research.

 

 

2. What do the regulators say?

That some tutoring firms exploited parental paranoia. A marketing free-for-all -- sometimes with false ads and misleading campaigns -- funneled millions of kids into mind-numbing virtual classes with uncertain benefits. As student numbers exploded, venture capital investors who didn’t want to miss out joined Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and SoftBank Group Corp. in doling out more than $10 billion of funding last year alone. That exuberance alarmed regulators, who feared tutoring firms empowered by big capital would only grow and exacerbate problems. President Xi Jinping lashed out at the industry’s “disorderly development” at a meeting in May, intensifying a clampdown from agencies including the powerful education ministry.

 

3. What’s the bigger picture?

Officials are also concerned about the destabilizing effects of hundreds of millions of parents plowing their life savings into online classes, while subjecting children to increasingly onerous workloads. As with past booms built on shaky ground -- say, in peer-to-peer lending, online shopping or improperly licensed wealth management products -- Beijing stepped in to defuse what it perceived to be a potential time bomb that threatened to disrupt order and thus the party’s grip on power. In addition, many cite the cost and competition for better education resources as a contributor to China’s declining birthrate. China offered tax breaks -- including tax write-offs for education fees --in 2019 to promote its new two-child policy, but that didn’t help. Now it wants people to consider having up to three. A reform of the education system may seem like a good way to start.

 

4. What has the government done?

Declaring that the industry has been “severely hijacked by capital,” regulators published new regulations on July 24 that, among other things:

  • Require private companies that teach compulsory school subjects to go non-profit.
  • Ban them from going public or raising foreign capital.
  • Ban all tutoring related to the core school syllabus during vacations and weekends -- the prime hours for such companies.
  • Forbid outright acquisitions.
  • Banned foreign firms from acquiring or holding shares in school curriculum tutoring institutions, or using VIEs (variable interest entities) to do so.
  • Those already in violation need to rectify the situation
  • Forbid online tutoring and school-curriculum teaching for children under 6 years old.
  • Ban teaching of foreign curriculums or hiring foreigners outside China to teach.

 

That followed a plethora of restrictions, including caps on fees firms can charge and time limits on after-school programs. Regulators have fined two of the biggest startups for false advertising: Alibaba-backed Zuoyebang and Tencent-backed Yuanfudao. On the flip side, tutoring services that focus on cultivating interests, innovation and practical abilities -- say piano lessons -- are encouraged.

 

5. What’s the impact?

All the major education companies said they would comply with the new rules, including on foreign investment. Global investors such as Tiger Global Management and Temasek Holdings Pte that had poured billions into the industry are reeling. Plans for several mega-IPOs already had been halted, including VIPKid, backed by Tencent and Huohua Siwei. Shares of listed tutoring firms have gotten hammered, including industry bellwethers New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc., TAL Education Group and GSX Techedu Inc. GSX already said in May it’s closing its pre-school education business for children ages 3 to 8 and cutting staff.

 

--------------------------------------------------

Source: The Washington Post

Education insight report.

Education insight report.

A snapshot of education and related developments that occurred in China in the first half of 2014, prepared by Education New Zealand. 

 

 

China’s Ministry of Education released its full year figures on the number of students who travelled abroad in 2013. The figures show a record number of students – 413,900 – studied overseas.While the number of students heading overseas reached an all-time high last year, the rate of growth slowed significantly. Whereas previous double digit growth in the number of students heading overseas had almost become expected, 2013 bucked the trend with 3.5 per cent growth. This compares to a growth rate of 18 per cent in 2012 and an annual growth rate of 28.2 per cent between 2000 and 2010. 

 

For the full report please click here to open the PDF.

Please login here

Create new account / Forgot password?

Create new account

And a little about you

Forgot your password?

Enter the e-mail address you used to create your account and we will send you instructions for resetting your password.

* Please check your email to get the temporary password we've just assigned you

Edit Password

To continue reading this article please register below as a site user. Thank you

Create new account

And a little about you

If you are already a member, please login here