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☆ Private Schools Rethink China Future After Flunking Growth Test
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Nov. | At P.M. | ) www.usnews.com time to read: +6 min

Dozens of international and private schools in China are closing or merging, industry executives said, weighed down by tighter regulation, a slowing economy and dwindling foreign student numbers. Dulwich College operates nine schools in China including bilingual schools catering to Chinese nationals that have been hit hardest by regulatory changes. Strategic plans for growth of its high schools in China were "scaled back in light of changing government regulations", Dulwich said in its 2022 annual report. Authorities have also moved to control the number of private schools. Dozens of schools, from kindergartens to high schools, have shut or stalled in the past two years.

Persons: Farah Master, Kane Wu, Julian Fisher, Fisher, Dulwich, Xi, It's, Frank Feng, Jimmy Chin, Nicholas Burns, Mathias Boyer, Casey, Roxanne Liu, Dorothy Kam, Muralikumar Anantharaman Organizations: Reuters, Dulwich College, Venture Education, Strategic, Education, Motion, Dulwich, British, Authorities, Dulwich's, Victoria Kid House, Western International School of, Everpine, Xi'an Jiaotong University, University of Science, Technology of, International School of Beijing, Casey Hall Locations: Kane Wu HONG KONG, British, China, Asia, China's, Beijing, Dulwich, Singapore, South Korea, U.S, Britain, Canada, Shanghai, Lucton, Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen, Eton, Guangzhou, Western International School of Shanghai, Xi'an, Technology of China, Anhui, Hong Kong

Dozens of international and private schools in China are closing or merging, industry executives said, weighed down by tighter regulation, a slowing economy and dwindling foreign student numbers. A rapid expansion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic drove a surge of privately run bilingual schools in China offering a western exam curriculum. Dulwich College operates nine schools in China including bilingual schools catering to Chinese nationals that have been hit hardest by regulatory changes. It mandated that Chinese compulsory education be taught in private schools, aligning the curriculum more closely to public schools and making parents question the need to pay private school fees when their children can attend free government schools. Authorities have also moved to control the number of private schools.

Persons: Aly, Julian Fisher, Fisher, Dulwich, Xi, It's, Frank Feng, Jimmy Chin, Nicholas Burns, Mathias Boyer, Casey, Roxanne Liu, Dorothy Kam, Muralikumar Organizations: REUTERS, Dulwich College, Venture Education, Strategic, Education, Motion, Dulwich, British, Authorities, Dulwich's, Victoria Kid House, Western International School of, Everpine, Xi'an Jiaotong University, University of Science, Technology of, International School of Beijing, Casey Hall, Thomson Locations: Shanghai, China, HONG KONG, British, Asia, China's, Beijing, Dulwich, Singapore, South Korea, U.S, Britain, Canada, Lucton, Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen, Eton, Guangzhou, Western International School of Shanghai, Xi'an, Technology of China, Anhui, Hong Kong

☆ Xi'an Jiaotong University: Top Chinese university scraps English tests in move cheered by nationalists
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( Nectar Gan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

In a notice Wednesday, the Xi’an Jiaotong University in the capital city of Shaanxi province said students will no longer need to pass a nationwide standardized English test – nor any other English exams – to be able to graduate with bachelor’s degrees. But in recent years, some universities have downgraded the importance of English, either by replacing the national College English Test with their own exams or – as in the case of the Xi’an Jiaotong University – dropping English qualifications altogether as a graduation criteria. For some liberal-leaning Chinese, the downgrade of English is symbolic of China’s inward turn and a tightening of ideological control. “We need English to understand the world. These days, if you don’t understand English, you’ll still fall behind in the scientific and technological world,” a Weibo user said.

Persons: Xi Jinping, ”, Mao, Xi, it’s, Weibo, don’t, you’ll Organizations: Hong Kong CNN, Jiaotong University, English, College English, Jiaotong, Weibo, World Trade Organization Locations: China, Hong Kong, Shaanxi, Weibo, Shanghai, Taiwan

☆ ChatGPT and GPT-4 skew the most liberal — and Meta's LLaMA is the most conservative AI model, a new study says
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Kylie Kirschner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In a new study, researchers gave 14 AI models a political compass test and graphed the data. OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4 were the most liberal, Meta's LLaMA was the most conservative, and Google's BERT models were in between. OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's LaMDA AI model, and other chatbots have been criticized for sometimes giving racist, sexist, and otherwise biased responses. A political compass graph from the study shows how each AI model is biased. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman has said in response to criticisms of ChatGPT's left-leaning political bias, "we made a mistake."

Persons: BERT, OpenAI's, Shangbin Feng, Chan, Yuhan Liu, Yulia Tsvetkov, RoBERTa, Meta, Steven Piantadosi, Sam Altman, ChatGPT, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Greg Brockman, ChatGPT's, Brockman, Elon Musk, OpenAI, OpenAI —, Musk Organizations: Morning, University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, OpenAI, Google, UC Locations: Xi'an, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Sudan

☆ China's youth unemployment hits a record high, deepening its economic scars
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Clement Tan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

In this article GSBDGS Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTChina's young face the prospect of dimmer economic gains amid record youth unemployment in the world's second-largest economy. "The expansion of college education in the late 1990s created this huge influx of college graduates, but there is a misalignment between demand and supply of high skilled workers. "Increasingly, college graduates are taking up positions that are not commensurate with their training and credentials to avoid unemployment," Lu told CNBC. China's young face the prospect of dimmer economic gains amid record youth unemployment in the world's second-largest economy. "But the plan was for China's economy to transform from labor-intensive industry to more technological, with a strong service-oriented, knowledge economy," Yeung added.

☆ Opinion | Could Peer Influence Be a Cause of the Global Baby Bust?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Peter Coy | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

I read several papers on peer effects on fertility with Angrist’s caveats in mind. Those factors made the classmates more likely to become pregnant, which in turn influenced the fertility outcomes of the girls being studied. Less-educated women were less likely to have a baby when a colleague of the same education level had one. The negative peer effect for less-educated women “could come from a desire to distinguish oneself from one’s peers,” among other factors, they speculated. The research “provides support for the role of social norms in the fertility choices of reproductive-aged Chinese women,” they wrote.

☆ China to set up new financial regulator in sweeping reform
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The new financial regulator will replace the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) and bring supervision of the industry, excluding the securities sector, into a body directly under the State Council, or cabinet. The proposal for setting up the new regulator, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, was presented to China's parliament during its annual meeting on Tuesday. China's financial sector is overseen by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the CBIRC, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), with the cabinet's Financial Stability and Development Committee having overall responsibility. The setting up of the new financial regulatory body comes as Beijing seeks to rein in large corporate and financial institutions that may bring systemic risks via regulatory arbitrage among multiple authorities. 'STRENGTHEN SUPERVISION'The new administration will "strengthen institutional supervision, supervision of behaviours and supervision of functions", according to the plan.

[1/7] Farmer Wang Zhanling sits next to his wife in their house in Quansheng village, Heilongjiang Province, China, February 8, 2023. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035. "If the pension system does not change, this is unsustainable," said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia. The province has the lowest birth rate in China, with just over 100,000 births in 2021 and 460,000 deaths. Many experts, including Macquarie's chief China economist Larry Hu, suggest implementing a unified national pension system, backstopped by the more resourceful central government rather than cash-strapped local administrations.

Though the reasons for Bao's disappearance are unclear, his case follows a series of incidents in which high-profile executives in China have gone missing with little explanation during a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping. China Renaissance said on Thursday in a stock exchange filing that it had no information that Bao's "unavailability" was related to its business, and that its operations were continuing normally. A spokesperson for Beijing-based China Renaissance declined to comment on specific details and referred Reuters to its exchange filing made on Thursday. "What happened to China Renaissance highlighted the key man risk with some Chinese companies," Li Nan, professor of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said. key man risk generally refers to the threat posed to a company from over-reliance on a limited number of personnel for decision making.

☆ Ant-linked firms' shares rise after news of Jack Ma ceding control; Alibaba jumps
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Jan 9 (Reuters) - Shares of listed Chinese companies that count Ant Group as a major shareholder rose on Monday after announcements that Ant founder Jack Ma is giving up control of the fintech giant following an overhaul. Ant indirectly owns stakes ranging from more than 20% to slightly more than 5% in those companies. Ant said over the weekend that founder Jack Ma will give up control of the company. China's domestic A-share market requires companies to wait three years after a change in control to list. read moreLi Nan, professor of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University, however said Ant's inherent problems remain after its change of control.

☆ China is testing a magnet-powered floating car that goes up to 143 miles per hour—take a look
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-17 | by ( Tom Huddleston Jr. | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

If you've ever imagined a future filled with flying cars, your dream might be getting slightly closer to reality. Chinese researchers at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, performed road tests last week for modified passenger cars that use magnets to float 35 millimeters above a conductor rail, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. The researchers outfitted the sedans with powerful magnets on the vehicle floors, allowing them to levitate over a conductor rail nearly five miles in length. Eight cars in total were tested, with one test reaching speeds of roughly 143 miles per hour, according to the report. But Deng Zigang, one of the university professors who developed the vehicles, told the state news agency that using magnetic levitation for passenger vehicles has the potential to reduce energy usage and increase the vehicles' range.

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