ABSTRACT
Private supplementary tutoring in China emerged in the 1990s and then expanded at great speed to become the largest shadow education system in the world. Initially, tutoring was mostly provided by teachers, but later it was mostly provided by companies. At the outset, the sector was largely unregulated, but by stages, the government introduced regulations with progressive force. Major concerns on the government side have been the study burdens on students, the financial burdens on families and external capitalisation of the marketplace. The regulatory system is centralised, but requires cooperation by lower-level tiers of government and has encountered complexities in enactment.
