[According to authorities,
restricting the private tutoring industry is meant to level the playing field
in China’s highly competitive schools and lessen the financial burden on
families. China’s biggest tech companies have been brought to heel in the name of
protecting competition and consumer data.]
By Lily Kuo
Over the summer, China’s
multibillion-dollar private
education industry was decimated overnight by a ban on for-profit
tutoring, while new regulations wiped more than $1 trillion from Chinese tech
stocks since a peak in February. As China’s tech moguls compete to donate more
to President Xi Jinping’s campaign against inequality, “Xi Jinping Thought” is
taught in elementary schools, and foreign games and apps like Animal Crossing
and Duolingo have been pulled from stores.
A dizzying regulatory crackdown
unleashed by China’s government has spared almost no sector. This sprawling
“rectification” campaign — with such disparate targets as ride-hailing services, insurance, education
and even the amount of time children can spend playing video games — is redrawing
the boundaries of business and society in China as Xi prepares to take on a
controversial third term in 2022.
“It’s striking and significant.
This is clearly not a sector-by-sector rectification; this is an entire
economic, industry and structural rectification,” said Jude Blanchette, who
holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
At China’s national congress this
month, Xi retained his title as general secretary of the ruling Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), a move that would upset a decades-old system of term
limits and leadership succession. Xi has pushed an agenda of tackling income
inequality under the banner of “common prosperity,” a campaign that gives
officials and companies rallying around the cause opportunity to show their
loyalty before the reshuffle of party personnel.
[‘Heads
bashed bloody’: China’s Xi marks Communist Party centenary with strong words
for adversaries]
According to authorities,
restricting the private tutoring industry is meant to level the playing field
in China’s highly competitive schools and lessen the financial burden on
families. China’s biggest tech companies have been brought to heel in the name
of protecting competition and consumer data.
Yet other recent regulations
targeting the country’s youth appear aimed at asserting control over popular
culture, measures that critics say limit the public’s few outlets for debate
and expression.
Officials are cracking down on
China’s fervent fan clubs whose members discuss and rank celebrities, going to
extreme lengths to support their favored stars. (When Chinese Canadian pop star
Kris Wu was detained on allegations of rape in August, his fans flooded social
media in his defense and called for breaking
him out of prison.)
Male Chinese celebrities known for
their androgynous style have also become a threat in Beijing’s eyes. Regulators
have ordered broadcasters to encourage “masculinity” and put a stop to
“abnormal beauty standards” such as “niangpao,” a slur that translates to
“sissy men.”
“The party does not feel
comfortable with expressions of individualism that are in some ways
transgressive to norms that it puts forward,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of
modern Chinese history and politics at the University of Oxford. “The
party-state makes it clear that it has the first and last word on what is
permitted in mass culture.”
Within China, the campaign has been
met with a mix of approval and skepticism. Liang Min, 35, a linguist from Jilin
province, said China’s pop idol culture, in which young fans donate money to
celebrities, is out of control. “The teenagers are being misled. Personally,
I’m proud of this action,” Liang said. Internet users criticized the order
against “sissy” culture as state-sponsored homophobia. “Sissy men will not harm
the country, but prejudice and narrow thinking will,” said one comment that was
censored on WeChat after getting more than 100,000 views.
[In
China’s business crackdown, corruption probe casts pall over Alibaba’s hometown]
Jo Tan, 33, an administrator at a
test prep school in Changsha in Hunan province, said the limits on tutoring
have done more harm than good. Her company has halved its head count and
teachers must work longer hours.
“Students still have to compete to
get into good schools and colleges, and many of us are now on the verge of
being unemployed,” she said.
“Whoever came up with this policy
probably never had to worry about their children’s education,” Tan said, adding
that making high school and universities free would do more to promote equality
in education.
Michael Shou, general manager of an
on-demand English tutoring platform, said he expects more regulatory action in
more sectors.
“I do believe we are seeing a
profound transformation of society, especially given that the government has
implemented definitive and strict regulatory measures in such a short amount of
time and in so many different industries,” he said.
Xi’s crusade has left the country’s
previously all-powerful tech titans, such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s
Pony Ma, in no doubt about who controls China’s future. But it has also alarmed
investors.
Regulators in September summoned
Tencent and Netease over their online gaming platforms, ordering the
companies to eliminate content promoting “incorrect values” such as “money
worship” and “sissy” culture. Both firms promised to “carefully study” and
implement the orders.
Officials have been working to restore
investor confidence, with Vice Premier Liu He promising during a forum on
Monday in Hebei province that China’s support for the private economy “has not
changed and will not change in the future.” In early September, the People’s
Daily ran a front-page article pledging the government’s
“unswerving commitment” to the private sector and protecting foreign capital
and competition.
A 'profound revolution'
The scope and velocity of the
society-wide rectification has some worried China may be at the beginning of
the kind of cultural and ideological upheaval that has brought the country to a
standstill before.
In September, an essay by a retired newspaper editor and blogger
described the changes as a response to threats from the United States. “What
these events tell us is that a monumental change is taking place in China, and
that the economic, financial, cultural, and political spheres are undergoing a
profound transformation — or, one could say, a profound revolution,” wrote Li
Guangman.
The essay, picked up by China’s
state media outlets, prompted comparisons with a 1965 article that launched
China’s chaotic decade-long Cultural Revolution, and left even some in the
party establishment worried.
Hu Xijin, the outspoken editor of
the state-run Global Times, criticized the article as misleading and an
“extreme interpretation” of the recent rush of regulatory orders that could
trigger “confusion and panic.”
[Gay
Games in Hong Kong face attacks as China’s proxies target LGBT groups]
Differences over the article may be
a sign of deeper dispute within the party, according to Yawei Liu, a senior
adviser focusing on China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, who wrote that such
disagreement indicates “raging debate inside the CCP on the merits of reform
and opening up, on where China is today . . . and about what kind of nation Chna
wants to become.”
Residents expect more measures to
come, targeting regular life as well as other sectors. While the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism is preparing a ban on karaoke songs deemed out of line
with “the core values of socialism,” city officials are regulating
dancing in China’s parks, a popular pastime for retirees. In an editorial in
the People’s Daily in early September, the vice chairman of the Chinese Film
Association called on filmmakers to make more patriotic films and “further
promote” Xi Jinping Thought.
Ouyang Haotian, a student from
Guangzhou studying event management at Macau University of Science and
Technology, said the government’s crackdowns are well-meaning but sometimes
implemented too abruptly.
“Everything the government does —
they do it to maintain the stability of its governance, sometimes without
considering the impacts on individuals,” said the 22-year-old. “It is a
trial-and-error process, so people have to accept those errors and move on.”
Still, he said, the measures can go
too far. “There is a point where government regulations stop working. You can
ban artists and certain movies or songs, but you cannot teach people what to
think,” he said.
Lyric Li in Seoul and Alicia Chen
and Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
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