In 1994, a year after he launched what would become the world’s largest English-language tutoring company, the New Oriental Education and Technology Group, Yu Minhong was accosted by thieves outside his Beijing apartment, roughed up and forcibly tranquilized. When the lanky teacher came to, his apartment had been ransacked and he was missing two million RMB in cash (about $150,000 at the time). Years later, after the criminals were apprehended, it was discovered that they were responsible for a spate of violent robberies and had murdered six people. Yu was their only surviving victim.
Fortune has long favored Yu. Through his gargantuan success with New Oriental, which operated some 120 schools across 104 Chinese cities, he became, perhaps, the richest teacher on earth, amassing a net worth of $3 billion. Still, Yu is famously frugal. He drives a nondescript sedan and refrains from extravagant dress; some years ago at a talk, he wore a suit worth 300 RMB, or about $50. “If
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
