Guideline, sell-off give edtech jitters

Chinese private education companies, especially the listed ones, are quickly evolving future moves in response to Saturday's guideline that all institutions offering private tuitions to school students will henceforth be registered as nonprofit organizations, which caused a massive sell-off in related stocks on bourses in China and the United States.

In China's billion-dollar tutoring and online education (or edtech－educational technology) sector, companies typically offer a bouquet of extracurricular products and services. Some of them are even listed on the US bourses.

On Saturday, the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a guideline proposing wide-ranging reforms in the sector.