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Inside Asia: International Schools in China Point Students to the West

January 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

BEIJING — The Web site for a private school in Changzhou, a city west of Shanghai, features blue blazers and plaid skirts, music classes and an ivy-clad brick doorway — all the trappings of the British school system designed to appeal to wealthy Chinese parents.

In choosing Chengzhou, Oxford International College — with no connection to the British university — is tapping into a growing market of upwardly mobile Chinese willing to pay as much as 260,000 renminbi, or about $42,000, a year for a Western-style education and a possible ticket to a college overseas for their children.

“Changzhou is quite an affluent area, and many people want to send their kids overseas, so the proportion of Chinese students is ticking up,” said Frank Lu, the general manager of Oxford International Colleges of China. “The expat community is not enough to justify a school.”

“The market really is the Chinese — it’s the Chinese who want their children to go abroad and are willing to pay the fees.”

Some of the schools offer programs tailored to British A-levels or the U.S. Advanced Placement tests.

All promise to provide the proficiency in English needed to attend a foreign university.

In a sign of the eagerness to get the school up and running in Changzhou, classes have already started, even though the campus — complete with an artificial lake and boathouse — will be under construction until September.

The international aura is important in persuading ambitious Chinese parents to pay steep tuition fees. Many schools feature non-Chinese children on their Web sites or name themselves after elite schools in Britain or North America.

Oxford International is one example. Then there is EtonHouse, a Singaporean company that operates schools in eight Chinese cities.

Maple Leaf Educational Systems has expanded to seven cities in China from its original home in Dalian, a northeastern Chinese port city, by offering a curriculum endorsed by the British Columbia Ministry of Education.

Established British private schools like Harrow and Dulwich are also expanding their branches in China.

“My dad wanted me to go abroad at an early age, but my mom did not support the idea,” said Jiang Xin, the 17-year-old son of a real estate developer, whose parents compromised by sending him to the Maple Leaf campus in Chongqing for 50,000 renminbi a year.

“In the future I want to study abroad. My experience here at Maple Leaf is helping me adapt to the Western learning style earlier.”

Many wealthy Chinese parents, with single children because of the country’s one-child policy see the schools as a way to get a foreign-style education while keeping the children close to home.

“Later, when she goes overseas to college, we will have few chances to see her,” said Zhuang Zhengyi, the head of the parents association for Oxford International in Changzhou, where his daughter is in Grade 10. “We treasure the time we have with her now.”

The number of international schools registered in mainland China has soared in the past 12 years, to 338 from 22, said Nicholas Brummitt, managing director of International School Consultancy, based in Britain. Enrollment has risen 25 times in the same period, to 184,073 students.

Over all, 28.8 million students attend state-run primary or middle schools in Chinese cities, which are officially free but in reality charge a number of fees.

Somewhat fewer than half of the international schools in China are in cities like Changzhou, rather than the main expatriate centers of Beijing, Shanghai or Guangdong Province, a reflection of the increasing incomes of the Chinese middle class, who are spread across the country, and their aspirations.

Parents who can afford the international schools say it is a passport to a better life for their children, despite much higher costs. The schools offer the chance for a university education overseas, avoiding the pressure cooker that is the national college entrance exam, which was taken by about nine million Chinese students last June.

There are good state schools in every city, but their teaching is geared entirely toward the university entrance exams.

“This hurts students’ confidence and the quality of the teaching,” said Xu Jin, whose 16-year-daughter started at a branch of Dulwich College in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, in September.

“She was at the best public school but we were more and more dissatisfied. The teachers just taught the right answers and didn’t want the students to ask why.”

“We can already see the difference. She’s happier and learning faster.”

The international schools in Beijing or Shanghai generally are limited by law to foreign passport-holders. But that is not the case in many other cities, where growth in private education, including bilingual schools, is exploding.

For newly wealthy Chinese parents, the international schools offer an alternative to the mainland’s conformist, competitive exam-based state school system, and, some say, make for more well-rounded youngsters.

But other parents are not entirely ready to jettison the Chinese education system, and want to retain both options — applying overseas and taking the national college exams.

For them, companies like Compass Education, based in Tianjin, or Dipont Education, a firm founded in Australia, offer joint-venture international sections within established public schools, with an average tuition fee of as much as 100,000 renminbi a year.

“For Chinese parents it’s a totally different idea,” said Gavin Newton-Tanzer, a Compass board member. “Their children study only through memorizing things.”

The joint-venture schools offer the best of both worlds, he added. “Students can still be exposed to Chinese learning, which is more acceptable for local parents.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/business/global/international-schools-in-china-point-students-to-the-west.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

China, in Surprising Shift, Takes Steps to Spur Bank Lending

November 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The central bank said that commercial banks would be allowed to keep a slightly lower percentage of their deposits as reserves at the central bank. The change, which will take effect on Monday, means that commercial banks will have more money to lend, which could help to rekindle economic growth and a slumping real estate market.

Real estate developers, small businesses and other borrowers have been complaining strenuously in recent weeks of weakening sales and scarce credit. Prices have dropped as much as up to 28 percent for new apartments in some Chinese cities this autumn, real estate brokers have been laying off thousands of agents as transactions have dried up, and export orders have slumped.

The Chinese move was a particular surprise because the central bank usually announces moves on Friday evenings, to allow banks and markets plenty of time to digest the news.

The Shanghai stock market slumped 3.3 percent on Wednesday before the announcement was made, its worst one-day loss in four months, on worries that the government might not act. Central bank officials in the United States said the change was not made in coordination with the action taken by the Federal Reserve and central banks in Canada, Britain, Europe and Japan to lower the cost of borrowing dollars for foreign banks.

The central bank increased the so-called reserve requirement ratio six times this year, and raised interest rates three times. The monetary policy moves earlier this year had been aimed at curbing inflation, which persists but appears to have been replaced by weakening economic growth as the top worry for policy makers.

Monetary policy changes in China are made not by the country’s central bank but by the State Council, the country’s cabinet. Shifts in the broad direction of policy are usually made only with the approval of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party — the nine men who really run China.

Analysts said that the central bank’s decision to announce a change in reserve requirements instead of quietly nudging state-controlled banks to make more loans showed that an important political decision had been made.

“The public nature of this move — a move that would have gone through the State Council — is a clear signal that Beijing has decided that the balance of risks now lies with growth, rather than inflation,” wrote Stephen Green, a China economist at Standard Chartered Bank, in a research note. “This is a big move, it signals China is now in loosening mode.”

The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, cut the reserve requirement ratio by half a percentage point beginning Monday, to 21 percent for large banks and to 19 percent for smaller banks.

The Chinese move was such a surprise that one of the 15 members of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, Xia Bin, had just said at a seminar in Beijing Wednesday morning that China would only “fine tune” its monetary policy and would maintain an overall stance that he characterized as “prudent.”

Those remarks set off a slump in share prices during Wednesday’s trading in Shanghai; the stock market there had been closed for several hours by the time the central bank announced its policy reversal.

The People’s Bank of China is considerably more secretive than central banks in the West and particularly wary of foreign governments because of years of international pressure to allow faster appreciation of the renminbi, China’s currency.

The Chinese central bank provided no explanation for its move on Wednesday evening. The one-sentence statement only said: “The People’s Bank of China decided to cut financial institutions’ renminbi deposit reserve ratio by 0.5 percentage points.”

Easing domestic monetary policy makes it harder for China to maintain its policy of strictly limiting the appreciation of the renminbi against the dollar. The Chinese central bank has been taking most of the money that commercial banks deposit with it as reserves and then using it to buy dollars in international markets, so as to slow the renminbi’s appreciation.

But economists have seen signs in the past month that international investors are losing their appetite for speculative investments in China’s currency and have been buying fewer renminbi. That in turn has reduced the pressure from markets for the renminbi to appreciate and has meant that the central bank no longer needs to maintain its reserve requirements at record-high levels to raise the cash for its huge currency market intervention program.

Among the most widely watched economic indicators in China are the various monthly indexes of orders, backlogs and other details, gathered through surveys of companies’ purchasing managers. HSBC’s preliminary survey for November, released last week, showed an overall index of 48 points. A reading below 50 suggests a slowing economy, and 48 was the lowest reading since March 2009, when the world economy was struggling to recover from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and ensuing financial shocks.

The monthly release of the government’s survey is scheduled for Thursday morning in Beijing. It is widely expected to show a dip below 50 for the first time in more than two years.

The central bank’s move on reserve requirements comes as inflation in consumer prices has started to slow, from a peak of 6.5 percent in May down to 5.5 percent in October, according to official data. But private economists say that the true rate of consumer inflation is up to twice as fast, as the official data has a series of methodological shortcomings. China’s National Bureau of Statistics has acknowledged some of these shortcomings, although not the extent of their effect on inflation measurements, and is working on solutions.

Inflation in any case remains well above the government’s target of 4 percent. HSBC predicted in a research note on Wednesday evening that the government would not start reducing regulated interest rates for loans of various maturities until the official inflation rate fell below 3 percent.

Correction: November 30, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the timing of the Chinese central bank statement, which was issued Wednesday evening, not Thursday.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1d9e622f4e4f6d8f979cfc40bdc759b0

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Hertz to Begin Renting Electric Cars in China

August 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

HONG KONG — In the West, electric cars appeal to a do-it-yourself environmentalist personality, one who believes in taking individual actions to help address the collective problems of air pollution and global warming.

But when Hertz starts renting electric cars in China later this week, it will offer the vehicles with chauffeurs — a nod to China’s resistance to recognizing other nations’ driver’s licenses or the International Driving Permit.

Hertz executives said they planned to announce on Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai that the company would begin renting electric cars to individuals and companies in three Chinese cities, the latest sign of Western interest in working with the Chinese government on advanced technology vehicles.

Hertz will start by renting just two electric cars each in three cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — said Richard Broome, a senior vice president of Hertz. The cars will be E6 midsize sedans that have just rolled off the assembly lines of BYD, a rechargeable battery manufacturer and automaker based in Shenzhen.

MidAmerican Energy Holdings, controlled by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, took a nearly 10 percent stake in BYD three years ago.

Hertz plans to have 25 to 30 electric cars available for rent by the end of this year and is mainly limited by the production available from BYD, Mr. Broome said. General Electric will supply many of the charging stations for the cars, but the exact number has not been determined, he said.

The Chinese government has been energetically promoting the adoption of electric cars for several years. But automakers have continued to work on ways to extend the cars’ range.

BYD says the E6 can go up to 300 kilometers, or 190 miles, on a charge, if the air-conditioning is not running and the speed is kept around 70 kilometers, or 45 miles, an hour. BYD says that driving 80 miles an hour with the air-conditioning on reduces range to 240 kilometers, or 150 miles.

Electric cars on sale or under development from Chinese automakers tend to be fairly light and simple at a time when Chinese consumers have been moving toward larger, heavier and more options-laden models. A wide range of subsidies for electric vehicles has not yet proved adequate to offset this.

“It’s not about the subsidies, it’s about the technologies themselves — a lot of the companies are not ready,” said Yale Zhang, the managing director of Automotive Foresight, an automotive consulting firm in Shanghai.

Initial price tags for electric cars in China appear to be double those for gasoline-powered cars of comparable size, and market research has suggested that most Chinese consumers will resist paying extra. The government offers a national subsidy of 60,000 renminbi, or $9,400, to buyers of each electric car.

In the last year, the municipal governments of Beijing and Shenzhen have offered an additional subsidy of another 60,000 renminbi for buyers there, while Shanghai has offered an extra 40,000 renminbi, said Jack Hidary, Hertz’s director of worldwide electric cars.

BYD’s E6, the only electric car that a Chinese automaker has put into production so far, retails for 299,800 renminbi, or $47,000, before subsidies.

Beijing and Shanghai have also exempted buyers of electric cars from their controls on the issuance of car license plates, which are aimed at limiting traffic jams and air pollution. Beijing has started a lottery system for issuing plates, reducing the number issued by two-thirds from last year, while Shanghai auctions license plates, with prices often exceeding 40,000 renminbi.

Mr. Broome said Hertz had qualified for the national and municipal subsidies. The daily rate for renting the electric cars has not yet been set, but it will be based on the reduced price of the cars after subsidies, he added.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=39d9d71c9771318b37e53f8b84a455b3

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,