The Tragedy of Good Intentions
In China, results not slogans are what counts
View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective
One of the strengths we are blessed with in China is practicality. Results get a lot of attention. Slogans and statements of noble intentions get little.
One of the recent government interventions, its attempted banning of the tutoring (教培) industry, illustrates this well.
It’s all about a meritocratic society, we are told. It’s about evening the playing field. It’s about relieving children from having to spend long hours outside of school practicing test questions.
All sounds good.
Yet what is the reality?
One aspect of reality is that the majority of kids enrolled in public schools can’t keep up without extra help. The teachers have pressure from the schools to get through an enormous amount of material, and interaction with students tends to get reduced to a minimum.
A second aspect is that the national government has now decreed that exactly half of all children attending public schools in each city are to be routed away from the academic high schools (高中) and sent instead to technical training schools (技校). One test at the end of middle school – the zhōngkǎo (中考, or in long form 初中学业水平考试) – decides a kid’s fate. Kids who fail to make the 50% cut are widely seen as losers. One bad day, and that’s it. The pressure to pass is enormous.
A third aspect of reality is however the key one: namely, the fact that this concept is at odds with thousands of years of Chinese history. Attempting to dictate to Chinese how they educate their kids is not going to work. Education is valued very highly in society, which means that when it comes to allocating family resources, education tends to get priority over almost everything else. This is doubly so the case when the government is deciding kids’ fates at a young age according to an arbitrary 50% criterion. Anyone with a basic grasp of Chinese values would realize that no edict from government bureaucrats is likely to change that.
So what happened?
Millions of people lost their jobs.
Many companies were destroyed or decimated, with shares in leading companies like New Oriental (新东方) in many cases losing 90% of their value overnight.
No compensation was paid.
Tutoring continues, but is now paid in cash. Rates have skyrocketed, with pricey 1:1 home tutoring booming and group sessions now typically costing ¥300 (currently US$42) or more per hour. This is understandable, since facilities charge more, and extra costs for protection money need to be covered.
The result for kids:
Group 1: Kids with wealthy parents are more privileged than before.
Group 2: Parents who are less flush with cash are now squeezed even more.
Group 3: Some kids at the lower end of the socio-economic scale end up having to rely on their (exhausted) parents to fill the gap.
Group 4: Some kids are completely squeezed out and can’t keep up at school at all.
The results for society:
Some parents are squeezed out of the market.
Some teachers are driven out of the education market and forced to seek employment elsewhere.
Parents are discouraged from having children due to the now even higher costs.
Millions of kids get frustrated and depressed.
A large economic sector has to go underground into the informal economy, with the result that its participants cannot partake of the cost-savings which the free market offers.
Opportunities arise for smaller 个体户 tutoring providers as well as Westerners offering online tutoring to fill the gap.
Nonetheless, result #6 reminds us that not all is doom and gloom. This Twitter poster talks about precisely that:
https://twitter.com/talkcentss/status/1744758754162446420
Society and the market always find workarounds. As the old Chinese saying goes: “上有政策，下有对策。” This is hard to translate word for word, but it is something along the lines of: “When the authorities impose (foolish) policies, the people come up with (creative) countermeasures / workarounds.”
So it is and always shall be.
Check out our Substack article archive: Austrian China
Support us by sharing your thoughts and following us on X @ AustrianChina
The old proverb rings true "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". The authorities forget this when they introduce their regulations and legislation which are often a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived problem. I really wish they would leave people alone, Governments should not be seen and seldom heard!
seems the government wants to have more "losers" - maybe there are too many heaters that need fixing. i never understood why chinese schools need to impart such a mountain of information on poor school children who must give up their entire childhood for this task - anyone analyzed what kinds of information they are drilling into these little minds?