China’s nanny state: why Xi is cracking down on gaming and private tutors

Financial Times ^ | 6 Aug, 2021 | Tom Mitchell in Singapore and Thomas Hale in Hong Kong

[MtnClimber]

New restrictions reflect Beijing’s desire to maintain social control, but they also provide a window on to the strains of urban life.

The additional lessons Wang Gang bought to help his only child prepare for China’s rigorous university exam, or gaokao, were not cheap. In addition to group courses from a private education company, he also paid Rmb6,000 ($927) for his daughter to take one-on-one math and physics sessions with a retired teacher over the month-long winter school break.

“We are just an ordinary family but we cannot have any regrets when it comes to our daughter’s education,” says Wang, who lives in Baoding, an industrial centre in central Hebei province. “Every point counts in the gaokao. It’s just too important. It will basically decide her life and career.”

Late last month, however, the Chinese government declared that parents like Wang were piling too much work on their children. In a shock decree that rocked the country’s stock markets and the share prices of Chinese education companies listed in New York, President Xi Jinping’s administration announced strict new curbs on tutoring companies that drastically reshape an industry worth more than $100bn a year in sales.

This week it appeared that Xi’s nanny state was targeting another lucrative industry — video gaming, which China’s president has previously criticised for increasing “the incidence of myopia among students”.

[MtnClimber]

Under communism the people are only objects to be used for the benefit of the state. In normal societies it is called slavery.

[outpostinmass2]

Death sentence for private tutoring.

[untenured]

Naturally, to write a report like this all of the reporters have to be outside China itself, and correspondingly disconnected from Chinese reality. No one plugged into China would write a wishy-washy piece like this.

The reason China is cracking down on video games, and tutoring, and social media, and financing systems outside CCP’s control (the Ant Group and Tencent) has nothing to to with “the strains of urban life” or a touchy-feely fear that parents “are piling too much on their children.”

What all these crackdowns have in common is a CCP fear that somehow the Chinese people will develop networks independent of CCP control. The CCP leadership are dictatorial thieves.

When judging CCP behavior, simply assume that they decide based on what’s best for their corrupt monopoly on power. You will then do well in understanding China.

[alternatives?]

“When judging CCP behavior, simply assume that they decide based on what’s best for their corrupt monopoly on power. You will then do well in understanding China.”

Good point. You could also substitute “the establishment” for CCP and China and have another good point.

[dfwgator]

And don’t think the Democrats aren’t taking notes.

[ModelBreaker]

“When judging CCP behavior, simply assume that they decide based on what’s best for their corrupt monopoly on power. You will then do well in understanding China.”

That method works pretty well in the US also.

[sauropod]

Bkmk