For subscribers
New business comes with old risks for China’s struggling tutoring industry
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
Students arriving to school on the first day of the new semester in Shenyang on March 1, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
Guan Cong and Wang Bowen
BEIJING - China’s after-school education industry was caught flat-footed after Beijing rolled out a policy in mid-2021 that outlawed most after-school classes for K-12 students in an effort to reduce inequality in education.
The ban — which covered both online and in-person instruction — effectively sent the industry into survival mode as companies sought to replace the revenue they lost from classes they were no longer allowed to offer. E-commerce offered one potential path.
