Chinese For Profit Educational companies

[Deleted]

This weekend, WSJ has article about 3 Chinese Educational tutoring companies listed in New York, that have fallen 80-90% due to Chinese govt. crackdown on that industry.

China wants to reduce cost of education in China and reduce the need for private tutoring. The goal is very noble no doubt.

I would think China being communist, education should be totally free in China to begin with.

[anitya]

I do not think China wants to eliminate private education / tutoring because it will allow non-profit educational institutions. Even the US has very few for profit private schools that I would want anybody to attend. (Remember Trump University?) That is, most decent private schools / universities in the US are non-profit. I have not studied the history of US private educational institutions and why most of them are non-profit but it will be a good read.

As a side note, a good example of M* fair market value analysis at times being potentially way out of step from market place is their current FV estimate for these publicly traded Chinese educational companies. Per M*, which updated its analysis on Friday, both EDU and TAL are about 90% undervalued. I think these should be marked down to zero.

[bb2]

WSJ editorial board, FWIW, seems to think the crackdown is because the CCP wants to control education.
Quote: " Investors appear to be figuring out what’s really going on here. Ostensibly the tutoring crackdown is a form of social policy, as Beijing worries that out-of-control tutoring costs discourage parents from having more children. But this is really about the Communist Party’s political control. The Party wants to control what Chinese students study and who teaches them. It can’t tolerate foreigners writing lesson plans through private companies."

Maybe so. Xi is becoming predictable in that you can bet he'll do the autocratic thing. Kind of like someone else closer to home.