The Party’s assault on the private sector is roiling China’s billionaire ranks

By Jane Li
Published

In 2013, Chinese Partners, a movie based on the stories of the three co-founders of China’s largest private education company New Oriental, captured the upbeat sentiment in the country’s business circles.

In the movie, three ambitious university graduates, one of them modeled off New Oriental chairman Yu Minhong, achieved their rags-to-riches dream by launching English tutoring schools across China and eventually listing their company in the US. Partly thanks to the production, Yu, a kid from the countryside who became a billionaire, turned into a living symbol of the “Chinese dream.”

“The movie has conveyed a message: the US is not the ideal land…the success of the Chinese people can only take root in the soil of China,” a commentator wrote about the movie that year on China’s version of Quora, Zhihu.

Published at qz.com

We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers  in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.