Yu Minhong at New Oriental's Hong Kong exchange listing ceremony, November 9, 2020. Credit: New Oriental
In July 2021, China’s government nearly wiped out the country’s entire online tutoring industry after it banned almost all private, after-school educational services. Six months later, Yu Minhong, founder of online education giant New Oriental, was seen in public for the first time in a surprising new role: selling cherries and other fruits and vegetables via a livestream.
Yu’s move was part of New Oriental’s pivot to e-commerce after its previous business of selling after-school tutoring and classes became nearly impossible. At the time, Yu’s livestream was widely viewed as a desperate attempt to save a doomed enterprise. His apparent fall from grace even elicited sympathy among some Chinese internet users concerned about one of the country’s previously most successful entrepreneurs.
But a year-and-a-half into New Oriental’s e-commerce experiment, Yu’s pivot appears to be paying off. New Oriental’s latest financial results reveal that the firm has regained prof
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
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.