China’s tutoring crackdown has created a black market
tutor
[T] ~ sb (in sth)to be a tutor to an individual student or a small group; to teach sb, especially privately 进行单独（或小组）辅导；任…的私人教师；指导
He tutors students in mathematics.
他教学生数学。
The academic system has become more unfair but just as pressure-filled
Here “just as” means “equally / to the same degree” — 同样地、一样地
It is more difficult but just as rewarding.
它更难，但同样值得
Sep 17th 2026
THE INSPECTION team barged in as business was in full swing. An official confronted the front-desk staff, a cop snapped photos of incriminating evidence, an investigator questioned customers.
snap
[T, I] (informal) to take a photograph 拍照；摄影
~ sth
A passing tourist snapped the incident.
一个过路的游客把这件事拍了下来。
~ (away)
She seemed oblivious to the crowds of photographers snapping away.
成群的摄影者不停地拍照，她好像浑然不觉。
Next, they got inside the computer system, scoping out prices paid and services rendered.
scope sth↔ˈout
to look at sth carefully in order to see what it is like 端详；打
render
(formal) to give sb sth, especially in return for sth or because it is expected 给予；提供；回报
~ sth to sb/sth
They rendered assistance to the disaster victims.
他们给灾民提供了援助。
to render a service to sb
给某人提供服务
~ sb sth
to render sb a service
为某人服务
~ sth
It was payment for services rendered.
这是服务酬金
Finally, when it was all done, the authorities in Huizhou, a southern city, posted a video of the sting, set to stirring music.
sting
[sing.] the upsetting or bad effect of a situation
〔某种情况造成的〕不快，痛苦感受:
the sting of rejection
遭到拒绝的痛苦
take the sting out of sth ( = make something less unpleasant or painful )
减轻某事的不快程度
She smiled to take the sting out of her words.
她微笑着，使自己的话不至于刺痛别人
set: [T] ~ sth (to sth)to write music to go with words 为…谱曲；给…配乐
Schubert set many poems to music.
舒伯特为许多诗歌谱了曲。
For this had been a raid on a most dangerous scourge: an after-school tutoring centre. Heaven forfend children study even more maths!
Across China, authorities have staged similar raids. Inspection teams in Inner Mongolia and Hubei have posted their own videos. Others have taken a different tack, naming and shaming: in Changsha they released the addresses of 113 illicit tutors. Many have adopted disguises. One father in Beijing pretends his son attends a calligraphy school (permitted) when in fact he is studying for the maths olympiad (discouraged). Wealthy families now hire “guidance counsellors” to aid their children, an expensive and illegal workaround.
In this way, striving students, anxious parents and earnest tutors have become unlikely members of a quasi-criminal underworld, devoted to exam preparation. It is a revealing—and for many in China maddening—saga about the shortcomings of public policy, especially against deep-seated social patterns. The government may mean well in trying to ease academic pressure. But the results have been a lesson in unintended consequences.
The crackdown began in 2021 when the government launched its “double reduction” policy, aiming to reduce both off-campus tutoring and homework for long-suffering students. Something had to be done: Chinese children can spend 12 hours a day on academic work, cutting into sleep and exercise, not to mention fun. Burnouts are common as students approach entrance exams for both secondary school and university. The government’s restriction on off-campus training is not a blanket ban. Parents can continue to send their children to ballet or coding classes. But for-profit tutoring of core subjects, from science to history, is prohibited.
Five years on, the results are visible. China’s academic industrial complex has been wrecked. Listed companies such as New Oriental and TAL—the biggest cram-school brands—lost nearly 90% of their market value, wiping out about $100bn. They have since pivoted to adult education and non-academic tutoring. Nevertheless, as shown by the raids on smaller tutoring businesses, and even individual instructors, the demand for extra studying has not vanished. It has been pushed underground and into new channels.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Chaguan visited a cluster of tutoring centres in the east of Beijing. Most were tricky to find: they no longer advertise online or post signs. But word of mouth is powerful, especially when a tutor gains a reputation for being effective. On the ninth floor of a nondescript business tower, the tutors in one office were skittish. They said they taught only classic English plays (allowed as a cultural course), not English for the sake of boosting test results. On the sixth floor, a tutor admitted she did something expressly prohibited: skipping ahead of the curriculum, by teaching third-grade concepts to second graders. “If this is what parnts want, we do it,” she said