The Chinese government reversed its decision to close the Fengyi Elementary School in China’s northern Hebei province this week, following huge protests by angry parents.
The Fengyi Elementary School is a private institution. The Chinese Communist Party wants to eliminate private schools, herding all of the nation’s children into state-run schools to ensure they receive Communist indoctrination. Some of the most desirable private schools are run by foreign companies.
The Chinese government is acutely sensitive to the embarrassment of parents paying for private schools to avoid state institutions, and also to complaints that expensive private education could give privileged students an “unfair” advantage in China’s increasingly tight job market.
Private schools are additionally problematic due to China’s steep demographic decline, which is leaving massive state schools with uncomfortably empty classrooms.
Even though private education is very popular with Chinese parents, the number of private schools has declined sharply over the past few years under government pressure. The last report on the subject from the Chinese Ministry of Education showed over 20,000 private schools have closed over the past four years, reducing the number of private-school students by over 3 million.
The Chinese government crushed private schools through a variety of methods, including limits on tutoring fees, hostile financial controls, and tighter regulations on educational content. Those regulations were designed to make parents wonder why they should pay extra for their children to receive the same micro-managed education, and indoctrination, they would receive at public schools.
The government has also de-emphasized the importance of learning English and other foreign languages, and a large number of students with foreign passports left China for good during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, greatly reducing demand for the private schools established for their benefit.
Asia News International (ANI) noted that advocates for the oppressed Uyghur people believe the Chinese government wants to use state schools as a “tool of cultural genocide.” Eliminating private schools makes it easier for Beijing to herd students from troublesome minorities into state-run institutions where their culture and history will not be taught.
Fengyi Elementary School found itself in the crosshairs of the Chinese government even though it was enormously popular among parents in the municipality of Nangong. A local parent told Radio Free Asia (RFA) last week “the school was well-regarded and parents would compete for placements for their children through a public lottery.”
“They saw that the school had high educational quality and that parents with financial means sent their children to Fengyi Elementary School, so they wanted to close it down,” said RFA’s source.
The government’s move was all the more outrageous because it came late in the school year. Parents were brusquely told to take their pick of badly-run state institutions for their children to finish out the semester.
To the apparent surprise of local officials, thousands of parents massed outside the headquarters of the Nangong municipal government last Sunday, demanding top officials “come out” and explain why their beloved school was to be shuttered.
The protest was not only large but remarkably persistent, lasting well into Sunday night. A few days later, Nangong officials acknowledged the protest and assured angry parents that “the problem has been resolved” because “Fengyi Elementary School will not be closed.”
RFA was a bit skeptical of this happy ending, noting that city educational officials have refused to answer questions from both local and foreign reporters about their plans for the school.
