China Inc.

By Denis P. Doyle

Fifty years after the Communist "liberation" of China, the world's largest market is being dramatically opened to private education. With no advance fanfare, and little international attention, Premier Jiang Zemin announced last June that market socialism was ready for fee-charging private schools. And while the legal and administrative apparatus to put Jiang's proposals in place have not been hammered out, Chinese families, educators, and entrepreneurs stand poised to incorporate private schools across the board, from pre-K to graduate school. International investors are already gathering in the wings.

Indeed, the recent history of private education in the People's Republic is robust, though much of it is effectively off the books. The best estimate offered at an international conference on private education held in Beijing in October is more than 1,000 private postsecondary schools across China. But so far, only one nongovernment college has been approved to grant degrees. (By way of contrast, China's population is 1.3 billion; the U.S. population of 270 million supports more than 30,000 elementary, secondary,...