The Changing Laws of China

All countries create and enforce laws. Most major laws are similar, like those against murder, theft, and drugs. But, many other laws, like those governing businesses, education, and social welfare, are very different. Along with how those laws are crafted and enforced.

Back home in America, congress proposes a law, debate for months or years, and eventually pass a law that goes into effect in 6 months or a couple years. However, in China, a law is announced and it is immediately in effect and everyone scrambles to figure out if they’re breaking the new law and how to change or what forms to fill out to comply with the requirements.

China’s Current Education Reforms

The big law changes right now are trying to regulate the massive tutoring industry into non-existence. The reasoning behind the recent changes mostly stem from the government’s desire for people to have more children to keep increasing the population.

The History

I know it’s a bit confusing, so I’ll go back to the beginning. China did a census a while ago and discovered that the population declined slightly. However, they need to keep up, or slowly expand their population, to make sure that there are enough people working to keep the economy going and take care of the elderly.

To have a larger population, people need to have kids (China is not in favor of immigrants in general and only allows a small number of people in every year and offers an even smaller number of difficult to get permanent residence cards). So, they announced that the Two Child Policy was going to become the Three Child Policy and everyone should get on to having that third kid.

But, raising a child in China is expensive. Very expensive, even when compared to Western countries. And most couples only want one, maybe two, kids. No one was excited by the policy change, except for the government.

Competitiveness of Schools

Part of the reason that it is so expensive to raise a child here is education. Children go to school for roughly the same amount of time as in other countries. But, after school, they have tutoring classes (Chinese, English, and math), art classes, calligraphy classes, music lessons, dance classes, and/or sports. Most kids have as many extra classes after school as their parents can afford, usually averaging one or two classes every day! Granted, children of poor parents only have what is offered by their schools and may only have tutoring with their teachers a couple times a week.

Chinese schools are all hyper competitive. To get a good job, you need to go to a good college and to get into a good college, you have to do well on an impossibly difficult exam (gaokao). But, to do well on that, you have to go to a good high school, you need to do well on a challenging exam (zhongkao). And, to do well on that, you need to go to a fancy school and get supplemental lessons.

While the exams cover all the school subjects, they, or really the scores, focus more on Chinese, English, and math, hence the Chinese tutoring industry focuses on those three.

However, all the studying and pressure leave little time for fun and play. Children are burned out long before they finish school. There are many people who are opting out of working in lucrative high stress jobs, even though they’ve gone to all the right schools and could easily get a job making a million yuan a year.

Protesting Stress

This protest movement is called “lying flat” and the government is not a fan (they’ve removed anything online that relates to the idea).

The “lying flat” movement calls on young workers and professionals, including the middle-class Chinese who are to be the engine of Xi Jinping’s domestic boom, to opt out of the struggle for workplace success, and to reject the promise of consumer fulfilment. For some, “lying flat” promises release from the crush of life and work in a fast-paced society and technology sector where competition is unrelenting. For China’s leadership, however, this movement of passive resistance to the national drive for development is a worrying trend.

Brookings.edu’s David Bandurski

The New Regulations

To find a middle ground between crushing stress and doing nothing, Beijing decided that the main problem was all the tutoring classes that kids take, not the culture in schools and ridiculously hard tests and mountains of homework.

To encourage parents to not spend money on the training centers, they decided that the public school education will become good enough for everyone. They’ll force the public schools to be and do better, so that all public schools will be “equally” good and the students will all learn the material very well.

Or, at least that’s the plan. Not all schools are created equal just because someone says they are. And the rich parents will always be able to pay to send their kids to better, usually international, schools and hire private tutors to give their kid the edge.

The whole situation gives the government the cover they’ve been longing for to regulate the tutoring businesses severely, which they’ve been trying to do for a while.

The laws, which were announced in the beginning of the summer and companies are finally starting to understand 2 months later and only apply in some test cities, state that academic tutoring companies and training centers need to be non-profit, cannot have foreign investors, cannot have classes after 9pm, on weekends, or during school holidays (like winter and summer breaks and national holidays), and banning new training institutions from forming. Beijing (the city, not the government) has even banned the use of all foreign textbooks.

The Early Results

Because of this, several large tutoring companies, including several online companies, have gone out of business or are completely overhauling their business model to comply with the laws. Tens of thousands of people are out of work, so many people that the government had to create job fairs just for them.

If these regulations expand to all of China, there’s going to be fewer jobs for foreign English teachers. If these work out how the government wants, I wouldn’t be surprised if they next tried to get rid of all foreigners in the education system. But, even if it doesn’t, China is not the same easy place to get a job as it was a few years ago.

However, parents will still be sending their kids to tutoring, whether privately with a local or in a class with a foreigner, as long as school entrance remains competitive. Just not as many.

Crackdown on Big Tech

China regularly changes its laws concerning technology, most famously they banned video games for years. Now, they have “privacy” concerns and “worry” about how data is used.

The current target is Didi, China’s version of Uber. Suddenly, just days after Didi’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, China realized that Didi had been collecting massive amounts of its users personal and private data.

Granted, they’re a tech company, there probably really are valid privacy concerns, but again, they’re a tech company. I’d be very surprised if someone could point out a large tech company that isn’t collecting all the user data they can get their digital fingers on. But it is suspicious that all this started right after the IPO.

Didi was being investigated in order to “protect national security and the public interest”. It was banned from all app stores and new users aren’t allowed to sign up for an account. If you already have the app and an account, you are still able to use it and get a ride.

WeChat temporarily suspended new user sign ups to “conduct a technical upgrade in accordance with relevant laws and regulations”. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the truth, or at least not the whole truth. Especially, as it came right on the heels of Didi’s banning.

But, they are also going after Meituan, the delivery giant (who does just about everything else too), and slapped a several million yuan fine for trying to win Monopoly in the real world (or maybe just becoming so big it’s a monopoly because no one can compete with it in everything it does).

The One Law Announced

The only time I’ve heard of a law being announced before it was in effect were those dealing (helmet rules, registration, and safety requirements) with e-bikes here in Shenzhen. And, technically, most of the laws were already on the books, they just weren’t regularly enforced.

And, a month after the laws/enforcement of the laws went into effect, there’s still no way to do the required e-bike registration with the police.

The Good and the Bad

As annoying as not knowing if the laws that regulate your life will change tomorrow, some of the changes have been for the better. For example, most payments in China are done through WeChat or Alipay, which is great if you have a bank account here but annoying if you’re a tourist just passing through.

The laws protect people from price gouging and unfair business practices. But, a lot of them come at a high price and a significant loss of freedoms.

One dock worker in Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, tested positive. He was sent to the hospital to recover, while 254 people he came in contact with and 396 people they came in contact with will spend the next two weeks in quarantine, and pay several thousand yuan for it.

Which would you rather be? The sick dock worker or the quarantined? After two stints in quarantine, I’d rather be sick.

If you have any questions about any of the terms I’ve used, look in the glossary.