Recently, the British media reported that mainland Chinese companies have begun buying up schools in large numbers overseas.
These companies are quietly acquiring schools in Western countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as in Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, and even in some countries in South America, the Middle East and Africa.
In a lengthy investigative article published on Feb. 21, the British Daily Mail said that in the United Kingdom alone, Chinese companies have bought 17 schools in the past few years, warning that the pandemic of Chinese communist viruses (Wuhan virus, New Crown virus) has hit the British economy hard and that many private schools are in financial trouble and could be the next wave of acquisition targets.
The article reveals that nine of the 17 schools have new owners whose founders or owners have ties to the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party, and that many of these Chinese “private enterprises” have been found to have “party branches” of the Communist Party.
Among them, Yang Guoqiang, founder of Bright Scholar, the parent company of Bright Scholar, which has acquired three private schools and an educational institution in the United Kingdom, publicly emphasized at the group’s annual work conference on January 8 that “love for the Party and the country is an important part of the corporate Culture of Bright Scholar “Mo Bin, the current president and secretary of the Party Committee, also publicly stated that he wanted to cultivate “backbones into Party members, Party members into backbones, and Party backbones into corporate executives”.
The British Education group (CATS Colleges Holdings Limited), which Boshiwa acquired, has five campuses, including Boston in the United States and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and owns 10 international language schools in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
While Chinese companies’ acquisitions of schools are emphasized as a way to “capture the lucrative private school market in the U.S. and Europe,” Chinese media reports on this issue also describe Chinese companies’ acquisitions of schools and educational institutions overseas as part of the CCP’s global strategy. For example, on their own websites, Chinese companies acquiring schools overseas explicitly state that they are doing so in response to the “One Belt, One Road” plan; and the 15-year education plan released by the CCP Central Committee in 2019 explicitly encourages Chinese companies to go overseas, including the phrase, “to participate deeply in research and development of international education rules, standards, and evaluation systems.”
“Deeply participate in the research and development of international education rules, standards, and evaluation systems”, how that sounds like something the American left wants to do right now!
In fact, the acquisition of American schools by Chinese companies has been going on for a long Time.
Bloomberg reported in 2018 that Chinese companies had already purchased Bay State College in Boston, Dowling College in New York, Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire, and Chester College.
Bay State College was acquired by Ambow Education Group in November 2017, while the defunct Chester College was acquired by Jiahui Education in 2015; it was later converted to Busche Academy by Jiahui. It became a boarding school for mainly Chinese students.
In addition, the New York Military Academy, where former U.S. President Donald Trump trained and graduated, was sold at auction in October 2015 to the Chinese company SouFun Holdings Ltd for $16 million, through the nonprofit “Nature Conservation Research Center,” bought the school, which was founded in 1889.
More acquisitions of U.S. schools by Chinese companies also include.
▪ the American International School of Utah (AISU) in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was strategically acquired by China’s 51Talk No Worries English in November 2016.
▪ St. Paul’s College in Massachusetts, acquired by Xinhua Education Investment Corporation (XEI) in December 2017.
▪ International Academy of New York (IANY) was acquired by Shandong Kewen Investment Holding Group. This was disclosed because there were some financial disputes in the middle, which is why it had to go to court, because the SCE company that financed the purchase of the school was set up in Delaware by Flying Universe, a Cayman Islands-registered company controlled by Cowen
▪ The Stratford School system, which operates throughout California, was acquired by Chinese private equity firm Primavera Capital for $500 million in December 2017.
▪ a private preparatory academy in Florida (Florida Preparatory Academy), which was sold to a Chinese education company, Newopen Group, in December 2017
▪ Springfield Commonwealth Academy, a Massachusetts school, held a signing ceremony for its acquisition on July 29, 2019, with Zhongke Zhi Zhi International Education Technology Co.
And of all the acquisitions of U.S. schools by Chinese companies, the most controversial is Beijing Kaiwen Education Technology’s $40 million acquisition of New Jersey’s Westminster Choir College in 2018 (for a total of $56 million). Choir College.
The prestigious Music school, founded in the 1920s, specializes in training singers, music teachers, pianists, conductors and other music professionals. It regularly performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and students sing with Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini, among other The students will also sing with such renowned vocalists as Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini.
NPR (NPR) reported in 2018 that college faculty members launched several lawsuits to try to block the sale of the college to a Chinese company, and lawyers said that Beijing Kevin Education Technology’s parent company, the Badaifu Holdings Group, is actually a state-owned enterprise under full Communist Party control. So they argue that “American universities will be taken over by a company owned and controlled by the Chinese government, which does not recognize any degree of academic freedom,” and that “academic freedom will now be controlled by government officials in Beijing.”
But for the most part, the U.K. and the U.S. are not opposed to takeovers from China and, to be blunt, to money from China.
Barnaby Lenon, former principal of Harley Public School and chairman of the Independent Schools Council, sees the sale of schools to the Chinese as “a very encouraging development,” he said. “They have the money now and we don’t. We should be pleased that they are interested in investing in British schools.”
Some U.S. experts who have helped China promote its overseas education initiatives believe that Chinese education companies are running schools in the U.S., mainly for Chinese Parents who dream of sending their children to top U.S. universities, and for whom sending their children to top U.S. universities is very important, so boarding schools before college are very competitive in the Chinese market.
Chinese people are brand conscious, especially about the brand of the university they attend. Top universities in the US and UK, such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc., are highly sought after by Chinese students.
In recent years, the trend of Chinese students becoming younger has started, and many Chinese students have been studying in the UK and the US since they were in middle school or even elementary school. For these young International Students, Chinese parents want both an English-speaking environment and an easy adjustment in Life. This has led many Chinese investors to smell the business opportunity and start to quietly inject capital or even acquire schools in the UK and the US.
At the same time, most Chinese companies that buy branded schools overseas use them to strengthen their brand of international schools in China, thus killing two birds with one stone.
However, some of these Chinese companies are also “strategic investments,” and two even say they are in line with the “Belt and Road” global expansion plan advocated by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
An article in the Daily Mail found that some of the acquired British schools are using educational tools to teach children about the “whitewashing” of China (the Chinese Communist Party). The article also compared the acquisitions to the Confucius Institute, fearing that the Chinese Communist authorities are using it for cultural infiltration.
The article also cites the example of the Chinese company Ray Education Group, which says on its website that it has launched its Global Campus program in response to the “One Belt, One Road” call.
Not only Yali, but also China Maple Leaf Educational Systems Limited, which is known as a “Chinese private education giant,” also launched a “Maple Leaf Education along the Belt and Road” feasibility study in 2017. Feasibility Study Report on Maple Leaf Education along the Belt and Road”, and has acquired high-end international schools in Singapore and Malaysia, planning to expand cooperative schooling throughout Southeast Asia.
In China Education Modernization 2035, released on February 23, 2019, the CPC Central Committee also emphasized “promoting the development of Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms with special characteristics. Accelerate the construction of overseas international schools with Chinese characteristics”. Actively serve the “One Belt, One Road” construction, “participate deeply in the research and development of international education rules, standards and evaluation systems”, and enhance the international influence of Chinese education.
To be honest, these official statements by Chinese educational institutions or Chinese companies about “One Belt, One Road” are not surprising to those who know China, because China is political first and the atmosphere is becoming more and more politicized. It is impossible for schools to go overseas and acquire schools without government support in terms of foreign exchange, so there must be a “reason”, a reason that can be used to convince officials, and “Belt and Road” is certainly a good reason.
Of course, this kind of thing must be a two-way street.
Some British politicians, such as Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and Nigel Farage, former leader of the Independence Party, are concerned about China’s plans to expand its education internationally, suspecting that the Communist Party not only wants to expand its influence, but also has a “cultural dimension to its propaganda and indoctrination. There will be cultural indoctrination and indoctrination.
Will there be cultural indoctrination and propaganda? We can be 100 percent sure that there will be, but only for a short period of time, and the CCP will decide when to start, depending on the circumstances. This is a war between two sides, from military to economic and trade, science and technology, and now it has entered the field of culture and education, and the future of mankind may be at stake, whether to follow the path of freedom and openness or the path of autocracy.
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