A specific timeline has not yet been established, but the revision clearly means that all for-profit private schools in China are prohibited from teaching students between grades 1 through 9. As expected, the revised law was adopted Monday on a third readying by the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.

Private schools will become exempt from the proposed ban if they registered as non-profit schools, but doing so would require government approval on the setting of tuition fees.

Private education in China was previously a booming industry that attracted huge investments. With relaxed restrictions now at an end, the government is now seeking tighter control by ending the ability of schools to set the curriculum as well.

The spread of “Western values” at Chinese schools has been a constant concern in China. Earlier last month, Shanghai authorities told 21 international schools to adopt state-sanctioned educational subjects as part of their curriculum. In January 2015, Education Minister Yuan Guiren said that Chinese universities should never “let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes.”

At the same time, the tightening of government control over education follows greater central oversight over a number of sectors including information dissemination, news and the internet and comes when the Communist Party of China has rallied behind Chinese President Xi Jinping as the “core leader”.

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As part of Reading Month, the Sanlian Yongheng School in Longhua New District encouraged its students to pick out their own selections in order to develop their literacy. However, one student simply went too far. The book she selected, The Youth’s Handbook of Scientific Exploration, ended up exposing a wealth of knowledge that she wasn’t prepared for.

An unnamed parent lashed out at the school for allowing the child to read a book that contained supernatural references. “The school is a place for imparting scientific and cultural knowledge. Why are such books being promoted?” she asked.

“I didn’t think the book was anything special from its title, and didn’t think much about it at first,” the parent confessed. “However, over the past few nights, my child has been calling out in his dreams while sleeping; she said she saw the ‘boogeyman’ that was written in the book. She was so scared, she couldn’t go back to sleep.”

The book is filled with tales of the supernatural and contains story titles like “The Constant Ghost of the White Palace”, “The Haunted House of the Isle”, “The Reincarnated Youthful Girl”, and “The Photo of the Grandmother Ghost”. And as pointed out by the parent, the book contains a “terrifying” picture of a black cat with its fangs bared.

“The words in this book have a terrifying effect upon me as an adult — just think what it can do to a minor,” said the parent.

Confronted with the accusations of promoting supernatural elements through education, a representative for Sanlian Yongheng School dismissed any wrongdoing, saying that the school’s 6th graders have the ability to choose whatever they want to read by themselves.

The representative also said the school has refunded the purchase of The Youth’s Handbook of Scientific Exploration.

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China’s top legislature is debating a revision to the 2002 Law on the Promotion of Non-Public Schools that would limit the country’s private schools to students in kindergarten, grades 10 to 12, and university.

The revision comes after Shanghai authorities told 21 international schools to adopt state-sanctioned educational subjects as part of their curriculum. If the proposed law is passed, about 10,200 private schools and 12 million students in China will be affected.

Private schools would become exempt from the proposed ban if they registered as non-profit schools, but doing so would require government approval on the setting of tuition fees, putting private schools at a disadvantage.

Wu Hua, head of the Research Center of Private Education at Zhejiang University, believes the revision will be passed, thereby limiting options for Chinese parents wanting an alternative to the rote-teaching of public schools.

“The proposed law sends a signal that for-profit schools are unwelcome in China,” said Wu. “Even if they switch to non-profits, they would face challenges in terms of acquiring land and struggle to operate without preferential tax policies.”

In January 2015, Education Minister Yuan Guiren said that Chinese universities should maintain “political integrity” and never “let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes.” Without being specific, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech last December that hostile forces were attempting to subvert the Party’s rule and faith in Marxism, Socialism and Communism.

By comparison, some Western schools are becoming more Chinese in their approach to education. This past July, the UK decided to adopt Chinese teaching tactics as part of its schools’ mathematics curricula.

Meanwhile, some Chinese schools are attempting to cater to parents wanting an international education for their children by opening campuses in the USA.

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But with demand rising, Chinese parents are finding that if their children can’t get accepted into a US school, there is still the next best thing: a Chinese school that is located in the US.

Dongbei-based Jiahui Education is hoping to meet the growing Chinese demand for a US education by opening its own school in Chester, New Hampshire. Called Busche Academy, the $1.5 million investment looks to cater to the needs of Chinese exchange students seeking an education abroad, but won’t have to contend with the hassles of living with a host family not accustomed to having Chinese guests.

Jiahui’s students pay an annual tuition of $6,000 to be enrolled at any of its four schools in China, or $10,000 to be part of its international school at Busche Academy. A summer program at the New Hampshire campus costs $2,000.

Branching out with “international campuses” in the US is catching with other companies as well.

A company called Weiming has been trying to purchase a former University of Connecticut off-campus location in West Hartford, Connecticut to serve as a dormitory from which exchange students would attend local public schools. A similar situation is happening in Rhode Island where a company called Roosevelt Academy wants to change a former nursing home into a dorm.

Despite big ambitions to expand, other educational institutions are hesitant to get involved with start-up schools like Busche Academy.

“If anything, the impression our group left with was concern over the lack of preparation, communication, and substantive educational planning,” said headmaster Griffin Morse of nearby Pinkerton Academy.

And while Busche Academy currently has students enrolled, it doesn’t appear to have a functioning website. A visit to BuscheAcademy.com reveals an unfinished site for the school that doesn’t even contain a proper phone number or e-mail address.

The site just says the school curriculum is “designed to give students a full U.S. cultural experience while attending Busche Academy” of which examples include Six Flags Amusement Park and Boston theater – but most importantly – a tour of the MIT and Harvard campuses.

But even with that little information, Busche Academy demonstrates it knows Chinese parents desperately want their children to study overseas. Getting closer is the bottom line – even if it just means “geographically” closer.

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The Beijing-based newspaper the Legal Mirror reported that the Beijing Forestry University used the mistake-riddled textbook to teach non-English majors during the 2015-2016 academic year.

First published in 2012, the second edition of the textbook, “College English Practice Tests” (shown below), contains numerous grammatical and typographical mistakes.

One example includes the passage “You can expect to be generating, processing as well as exchange information” in which the word “exchange” should read “exchanging”.

The unnamed resident who first identified the errors with the text book says that “the difficulty in this book fluctuates; some of the vocabulary exceeds the requirements of level 6; and the 14th in the study series is actually at a middle school difficulty level.”

Designed to help university students prepare for the College English Test (CET), a mandatory proficiency test at Chinese universities, Legal Mirror reported that the textbook was also used at other schools.

Peking University Press who publishes the text, has told retailers to pull the book from store shelves. However, it appears the textbook is still available for sale at online retailers like Amazon.

One teacher at Beijing Forestry University said mistakes in its textbooks are “not uncommon”, while another teacher named Shi Bing said mistakes can be found in 30 percent of English textbooks in China.

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Kang Chengwei, a student at the University, compiled the report based on 60 cases of sexual harassment at the University since 2007. The report took the four months to compile and the aid of seven students.

According to the report, cases of reported sexual harassment have increased over the past ten years. There were 12 cases last year, compared with zero in 2008 and just one complaint in 2007.

The areas of Beijing Normal University with the highest number of reported cases of sexual harassment are Teaching Building No. 2 on the east side of the campus, and the stretch of Lishen Road right along its gymnasium.

“I can’t remember how many cases I’ve read in the past three years, but nobody has ever done a study on it,” said Kang. Kang suggested the report and the map can aid campus security in dealing with the issue. Kang also expressed hope that the report will encourage victims to speak out against sexual harassment.

The following shows Kang’s map of the campus with areas of high frequency of sexual harassment marked in red, and is followed by an English-language map.

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Xinjiang Party Chief, Zhang Chunxian, told the 2,939 teachers sent to inland Chinese institutions that they should “lead students to promote unity and fight against separatism and religious extremism.”

Zhang reminded them that it was the their responsibility to “help students gain a better understanding of the central government’s support of Xinjiang”.

Since 2000, over 2,700 teachers that can speak Uighur were relocated to “assist with the management of students from Xinjiang”, reported Tianshan Network.

The relocation of Xinjiang teachers comes at a time when the region suffers from a lack of educators.

In February 2015, Xinhua reported that there was a shortage of more than 30,000 teachers proficient in both Mandarin and one local language in Xinjiang. As Mandarin-speaking teachers were necessary to spread “the official tongue”, local authorities announced they were allocating 254 million yuan ($41.48 million) over five years to teach Mandarin to ethnic minority teachers in order to make up for the region’s shortfall of bilingual teachers.

Xinjiang, however, looked to alleviate the teacher shortage this past May by hiring 11,000 new teachers from around the country. Overall, Xinjiang hired 72,600 teachers over the past five years, 62,400 of whom were bilingual.

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Education Minister Nick Gibb announced the country had allocated GBP41 million to institute the “maths mastery” policy at 8,000 elementary schools, accounting for over half of all elementary schools in the UK.

“I am confident that the steps we are taking now will ensure young people are properly prepared for further study and the 21st century workplace,” Gibb said. “And that the too-often heard phrase ‘can’t do maths’ is consigned to the past.”

“The significant expansion of the south Asian maths mastery approach can only add to the positive momentum, with thousands more young people having access to specialist teachers and quality textbooks,” he added.

First introduced in UK classrooms in 2014, “Shanghai-style” education focuses on teaching students together as a entire class. The “chalk and talk” approach has teachers give one lesson to the class, explaining each step of a calculation along the way.

Gibb emphasized the need of rote learning among UK students, insisting that multiplication tables be memorized by students at earlier ages. Gibb stated that UK students should spend “more time on high-quality, productive practice” to develop a “deeper, stronger mathematical understanding.”

So far, some 130 Chinese teachers have traveled to the UK to share their teaching methods with UK teachers. The Department of Education hopes to train hundreds of UK teachers within four years.

Reports have suggested UK students lag three years behind their international peers when it comes to mathematics. Last year, a BBC documentary about the teaching exchange revealed frustrations on both sides. Chinese teachers were seen unable to control UK students, while English teachers were heard criticizing Chinese teaching practices.

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Since 2003, the Ministry of Education has enrolled minority students from underprivileged areas in West China as a way to redistribute educational resources to poorer regions. Students who take the gaokao in larger urban centers are generally believed to have an advantage over applicants from other parts of the country, due to better educational resources.

Protests against the gaokao affirmative action have also been taking place in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Beijing, where one school has gone online to announce they were deeply “disappointed” with the “irrational behaviors” of parents who “misunderstood the admission policy”.

The High School affiliated with the Minzu University of China announced its minority students would continue to share the ethnic minority quota for the gaokao until 2018.

Han majority parents are angered by the preferential treatment, alleging that their children are missing out. Xiong Kunxin, an ethnic studies professor at Minzu University, said Han majority protesters don’t understand the disadvantages minority students face, citing a lack of teachers and English classes that aren’t provided until high school.

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The six-week course consists of three or four 90 minute classes per week. Activities include jogging, running, and maintaining an abdominal bridge (planking). According to the course instructor, Zhou Quanfu, only applicants with a body mass index (BMI) over 30 are eligible to enrol in the class. Zhou claims that due to the BMI requirement, only 60 percent of applicants are accepted. However, students with an average BMI are still allowed to audit the course.

In addition to regular exercise, students are required to count calories in a daily food journal and submit a weight-loss related paper at the end of the course. Topics submitted by past students include “how fat forms and decomposes in the human body “; “how fat influences students’ psychology”; and “how overweight college students control food intake”.

If offering academic incentives as a way to encourage obese students to lose weight sounds like a drastic measure, it’s because Nanjing schools have witnessed the fatal effects of obesity. Last October, a third-year student at a Nanjing university collapsed and died while attempting to complete a 1,000 meter race as part of a physical education examination. The 20 year-old student was 5’6 (168 centimeters) tall and 202 pounds (92 kilograms).

According to a report published in the medical journal The Lancet, there are an estimated 43.2 million obese men and 46.4 million obese women currently living in China, the most in the world.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that 12 percent of Chinese youth are overweight.

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