[Epoch Times on August 13, 2021](Epoch Times reporter Liu Yi comprehensive report) Wall Street English staff, a mainland English training institution, recently reported that the company will officially declare bankruptcy next week. The company requires the principal of each branch school to notify all employees and handle it as soon as possible resignation process.
According to news from China’s First Finance and Economics on August 12, the head of sales in the North Wall Street English region notified the principals of the central branch schools that the company will officially declare bankruptcy next week.
“The Beijing News” reporter learned from a number of Wall Street English employees that Wall Street English will declare bankruptcy. On the evening of August 12, a Wall Street English employee said: The news of the bankruptcy “is true. There is no official notification yet, and the company should have an official response the day after tomorrow.”
The employee said that the company’s bankruptcy was caused by many reasons. The company had owed its employees’ wages for three months before. After learning of the company’s impending bankruptcy on August 12, a large number of employees asked to leave.
On July 24, the General Office of the State Council of the Communist Party of China issued the “Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Compulsory Education Students’ Homework and Off-campus Training”, which is the so-called “double reduction” policy. It is retreating, and the segmented businesses of the education industry are all affected.
An employee who has worked at Wall Street English for many years told CBN that Wall Street English has continued to close stores since the outbreak of the epidemic, and the introduction of the “double reduction” policy can be regarded as an important factor that crushes the company.
Prior to this, Wall Street English had already received fines from the Chinese Communist Party’s regulatory agencies. In June of this year, the State Administration of Market Supervision carried out a surprise on-site inspection of off-campus training institutions that are larger, well-known, and more complaints and reports across the country, and gave top marks to 13 off-campus training institutions including New Oriental, Elite Education, Wall Street English, and DaDa English. fine. Wall Street English was fined 2.5 million by the Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for “false or misleading commercial propaganda” and ordered to make corrections.
The CCP’s “double reduction” policy stipulates that off-campus training institutions shall not occupy statutory holidays, rest days, and winter and summer vacations to organize subject training. Disciplinary training institutions are not allowed to be listed for financing, and capitalized operations are strictly prohibited. Existing subject training institutions are uniformly registered as non-profit institutions.
Financial commentator Wang Jian stated in his self-media program that this is an extermination of off-campus educational institutions.
Mainland media quoted a US dollar fund partner as saying: “This is to uproot the roots and not give anyone a chance. This is something I didn’t expect at all.”
Off-campus English education is the focus of the CCP’s current purge. In addition to prohibiting the provision of overseas education courses, the “double reduction” also strictly regulates foreign teachers, especially “prohibiting the recruitment of foreign personnel from abroad”, which is tantamount to directly cutting off the way for foreign language teachers to teach online.
The Voice of America quoted an analysis by Wang Guochen, an assistant researcher at the China Economic Research Institute, saying that ignoring English education may be impractical for China, an export-oriented economy. Because “English is an international language, so you have to deal with the world or especially in terms of independent innovation of science and technology, you may still have to rely on the United States (language), or rely on English to communicate and publish.”
Lu Chenwei, an associate researcher at the National Policy Research Foundation in Taipei, believes that this is related to the ideology that the CCP wants to control. She said that the compulsory education stage shapes the country and worldview of schoolchildren, especially in communist countries that attach great importance to values. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine that the Chinese Communist Party will be suspicious of the teaching style of foreign teachers using foreign teaching materials and interacting with Chinese students through online teaching.
A video of Alibaba founder Jack Ma talking about how English has changed his worldview has recently been circulating on the Internet. Ma Yun said: “For people like me, if they are not in English, all my education is that the school tells you what is right, mom and dad tell you what is right. After I have English, I think they speak It’s not necessarily right. We must think about this with our own heads.”
He gave an example: “I remember that in 1985, I used a summer vacation to go to Australia for the first time. Before I went, I thought China was the richest country in the world. Because our childhood education was that we wanted to liberate all mankind. When I arrived in Australia, I found out that people need to liberate us first.”
Chinese scholar Xue Chi said in an interview with Epoch Times that the CCP, in the name of rectifying “chaos”, reorganizes training institutions, it is likely that it also wants to achieve “complete” and “complete control of students’ thoughts.” “, the purpose of leaving no gaps.
Wall Street English was founded in Italy in 1972 and is an international adult English training brand. Since entering the Chinese market in 2000, 71 learning centers have been opened in 11 cities in China. According to company employees, the number of Chinese companies was more than 3,000 at the time, but under the policy of layoffs, there are now only about 1,000 people left. , Stores nationwide are closing one after another, and currently there are less than 30 stores remaining.
Editor in charge: Lin Congwen
.