News You Have Not Heard

 

Most folks no doubt are utterly unaware, but there has been a major earthquake in ESL (English as a Second Language). It has been going online in the last few years, and the vast market has been China, with its 1.4 billion increasingly prosperous prospects. Apart from COVID, the economies of this approach are obvious: no need to transport teachers halfway across the world, and look after them in China. 

Now, suddenly, the Chinese government has banned overseas tutoring. This is causing the sudden collapse of a huge and rapidly growing industry.

The official reason is that the cost of extracurricular studies was too great on Chinese families, and was discouraging them from having more children. Getting into the best colleges is highly competitive in China.

But then, why go after online teaching in particular? Given that one wants to learn English, this is the cheaper way.

Perhaps the Chinese government does not want Chinese people learning English.

After all, if they are talking daily or weekly with people living in the US, Canada, or UK, strange foreign ideas are liable to rub off. Is it advantageous for the Chinese government if Chinese people have a clear view of life in North America? Is it advantageous that they have good foreign friends?

Not if the government sees things getting worse in China in the near future, either in terms of material prosperity or personal freedoms. And not if China wants to whip up war sentiment.

It seems to me unlikely that the Chinese government will be able to stop the overseas tutoring. Instead, they are probably just forcing Chinese companies out of the market, leaving it to foreign countries that operate beyond their reach.

But the fact that they are trying looks desperate.