In recent news from October 10, 2025, the Chinese government, following the “double reduction” policy, has introduced the “one subject, one supplementary” policy to restrict teaching aids, claiming to reduce the burden on students. However, experts and parents point out that the exam-oriented education system and deep-rooted profit chains make it difficult for policies to address the fundamental issue of the “commercialization of education”. From schools, tutoring institutions to publishing companies, the entire system is intertwined with vested interests, making “burden reduction” more of a political show while students and parents continue to face heavy pressure.
Since September, education departments in many regions have issued notices announcing the cessation of ordering teaching aids for all elementary schools in the city starting from the autumn semester of 2025, by promoting “one subject, one supplementary”, strictly prohibiting recommending teaching aids to first and second-grade students and parents. This comes after the Chinese government introduced the “double reduction” policy in July 2021 and now closely controls the entry of teaching aids into primary and secondary schools under the name of “one subject, one supplementary”.
The so-called “one subject, one supplementary” means only recommending one type of teaching aid for each subject per semester for students to voluntarily choose. “Double reduction” refers to “reducing students’ homework burdens within schools and reducing extracurricular study burdens”.
However, education experts interviewed by Da Ji Yuan pointed out that this policy is likely to struggle against China’s deeply rooted commercialization of education and profit chains, and “one subject, one supplementary” may once again become a political movement akin to a passing trend.
According to a report on the CCP’s official media CCTV website in September, education departments in various regions like Shenzhen in Guangdong, Taizhou in Jiangsu, and Fuzhou in Jiangxi have successively issued notices. The new regulations explicitly state that schools are not allowed to uniformly order or recommend multiple sets of teaching aids and require the provision of designated teaching materials to students for free.
Officials claim that this move aims to “govern the chaos of teaching aids entering schools”, prevent schools from forcing or indirectly forcing students to purchase reference materials, and avoid issues of profit transmission and corruption.
However, most parents are not confident in this policy. A parent of a junior high school student from Anhui expressed concerns that without a large amount of practice, it is difficult to improve grades during the pressure of transitioning to senior middle school. He worries that if schools no longer uniformly recommend teaching aids, parents will have to choose on their own, causing more troubles.
Teaching aid distributors also revealed that some schools distributed two to three sets of teaching aids to each student in the past, “some places even up to four sets”, but the content approved by the education department is shallow, with few exercises and a huge gap in difficulty compared to actual exams. This deepens the reliance on teaching aids in society, and instead of decreasing, the teaching aid market has expanded under stricter regulations.
Yuan Jue, a former K12 education teacher in Guangzhou, told Da Ji Yuan that the Chinese government’s education policies have always been “flashy movements”. “Just like the ‘double reduction’ policy in 2021, the momentum was huge, but after the hype passed, the entire education and training industry revived.”
He frankly stated that under China’s “score-oriented” exam system, students, parents, and schools are all forced to pursue high scores, making teaching aids a necessity.
Yuan Jue further pointed out, “The education department wants to strictly control teaching aids, but in reality, they want to unify all and include local education and training institutions’ interests into the central system. They use the banner of ‘reducing burdens’, but in actuality, it is for maximizing profits.”
He emphasized that China’s education and teaching aids have long formed a huge industry chain, involving education departments, publishing institutions, and local schools, all tangled in vested interests.
To avoid policies, many training institutions have “changed the face” of tutoring classes – math is renamed “logic class”, and language becomes “expression skills class”. “This is nothing but the same old wine in a new bottle because as long as the college entrance examination system remains unchanged, schools and institutions are like parasites on the same boat,” Yuan Jue said.
He also revealed that even after the implementation of “double reduction” for many years, Guangzhou’s education and training institutions still have stable student enrollments, especially during junior and senior high school graduation seasons, where students are still flooding in. He believes that under the pressure of “scores above all” and the competition for enrollment rates, the Chinese Communist Party’s advocated digital education can’t move forward at all. The modernization of education is still far away from the innovative and freethinking models of developed countries.
Zhang Yu, a parent who moved from Hubei to the United States in May of this year and has two elementary school children, shared her experiences when her children attended a key elementary school in Hubei. She mentioned that the “double reduction” policy was not implemented at all.
“The school teaches you that 1+1 equals 2, but the exam asks you how much is 2 times 2,” Zhang Yu said, giving an example. She recounted how her first-grade child was once punished to copy the four characters of “the sound of singing birds and dance of swallows” fifty times each, “for a six-year-old child, this is equivalent to writing 200 strokes of complex characters. Homework often continues until eleven at night.” When she informed the teacher that her child couldn’t write, the teacher still demanded completion.
She helplessly said that according to the national policy, children should stop doing homework after nine o’clock and go to bed, but what if the child can’t hand in the assignment the next day in class?
“I have a friend whose first-grade child didn’t hand in the homework in the morning and was made to stand at the door by the teacher all morning. Then you can only let the child comply with the school and complete the tasks assigned by the teacher.”
In Zhang Yu’s view, the “one subject, one supplementary” or “double reduction” policies have not eased the anxiety, as the daily reality for children in China has already revealed everything: “writing homework until eleven every day, teachers not teaching exam content, and tutoring classes filling the streets. Is that what you call ‘reducing burdens’?”
She pointed out that although the education department ordered to ban extracurricular training, there are plenty of hidden tutoring centers. “The country says no extra classes but if teachers don’t teach the main content, parents must send their children for outside tutoring.”
She mentioned how training vehicles near her children’s school are “packed to the brim” during the weekends. She emphasized, “Training institutions charge fees, pay taxes, and local governments turn a blind eye. This is an entire industry chain.”
Zhang Yu mentioned that training institutions are now playing on the edge, “if they can’t tutor math, they open ‘logic classes’; if they can’t tutor language, they open ‘eloquence classes’. In arts schools, there is barely any drawing but rather focused on mathematical thinking and language expression.”
She also mentioned many “black tutoring spots” that are very secretive, “you can’t get in without an acquaintance, and some even need to climb through windows.”
Zhang Yu also touched on the heavy financial burden on families, “My husband and I earn ten thousand yuan a month, after deducting the mortgage and daily expenses, we still have to reserve money for our children’s tutoring classes. Just for math and language in one semester, it costs one to two thousand yuan, not to mention piano and drawing classes.”
Wang He, a columnist for The Epoch Times, believes that the Chinese education system has long been trapped in a “commercialization trap”, with textbooks and teaching aids becoming high-profit industries. “Many publishing companies and enterprises profit from this, with schools sharing the profits.”
He said that excessive teaching aids have caused social dissatisfaction, which is why the education department is now “listening to public opinion and demonstrating achievements” by introducing the “one subject, one supplementary” policy.
However, Wang He bluntly stated, “This is only a superficial gesture. In reality, a single policy change cannot alter the profit structure within the education system.” Many teachers earn money through indirect tutoring, free teaching materials are of no use because the nation’s uniform teaching aids are insufficient, and students still need to buy more.
“The CCP’s education system is not about nurturing talents but training slaves,” Wang He said. “Students are trained to be answer machines without independent thinking.” What the Chinese Communist Party needs are tools to serve the regime, not truth-seekers.
The CCP maintains control over the college entrance examination and information blockage, making education entirely serve the regime rather than social development. He pointed out that the CCP’s long-standing promotion of “digital education” has always remained at the slogan level because “exam-oriented education suits its ruling logic the best.”
Additionally, Wang He criticized that the Chinese education system is “seriously out of touch with societal needs”, leading to a high unemployment rate among university graduates, showing a disconnect between educational content and economic development.
He believes that if the CCP truly wants to address the education issue, it must break the entire educational ecosystem and commercial interest groups, even challenge its political system. However, this contradicts its authoritarian goals entirely, so the current policies are merely for show.