China’s extracurricular education sector for primary school students has developed rapidly, especially in large cities. Piano, painting, chess, skating and other lessons have sprung up in major shopping districts. Expensive summer camps claiming to broaden children’s horizons are also popular. Spending on children’s education is rising each year.

A survey of Shanghai early education (up to age 6) conducted by the Shanghai Association for Quality found that the parents of 60 percent of children under age 6 had steered them into extracurricular classes. For children between 4 and 6, the proportion exceeded 70 percent.

On average, each child attends two classes for around two hours a week. Average annual family spending on extracurricular classes was 17,832 yuan ($2,700).

Chen Chen learned that most of the children in her son’s kindergarten attend several classes carefully arranged by their parents. “If the children are interested and the parents can afford it, no harm is done,” she said.

Born in the 1980s, Chen is a typical parent with a higher education and above-average disposable income. She spends more freely on the next generation’s early education than her thrifty parents did.

She grew up in China’s exam-oriented system and hopes her children will have more opportunities to cultivate their interests and broaden their horizons.

“Our next generation is facing increasingly harsh and unknown competition. We are prone to anxiety and not likely to adopt a laissez faire approach to raise children,” she said.

International market research company Nielsen found that people born in the 1980s are the biggest consumers in China. As most of them are married, spending on family occupies a large share of their outlay – children’s education in particular, which accounts for 55 percent.

However, growth in spending on children’s education also piles pressure on parents, especially those like Chen, who has two children.

“We have to double the education spending, which means we have to tighten other family spending. So I think twice before enrolling my son in extracurricular classes, which typically cost more than 10,000 yuan a year,” Chen says.

Some parents on social media lament that they are not raising children but “cash burners”.

According to Liu Chenglian, a family education expert, some parents spend whatever it takes to give their kids an edge, but sometimes they just blindly follow a trend and overschedule their children.

President Xi Jinping encouraged a herding family in the Tibet autonomous region to put down roots in the border area, safeguard Chinese territory and develop their hometown.

Tibetan sisters Yangzom (first right) and Zhoigar listen to two government officials relaying an answer from President Xi Jinping to a letter the sisters wrote to him. The sisters live in Yumai in Lhunze county along the Himalayas’ foothills. [Photo/China Daily]

Xi, also general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in a reply delivered on Saturday to Zhoigar and Yangzom – two Tibetan sisters in the township of Yumai in Lhunze county, which sits at the southern foot of the Himalayas.

The two sisters wrote a letter to Xi during the 19th National Congress of the CPC, which ended last week, to report their experiences in safeguarding the country’s territory and introducing development and changes in their town, while pledging to make continuous efforts to protect the border. Among their activities is keeping an eye out along the border and reporting suspicious activities like possible smugglers.

Xi, in his letter, praised the family’s safeguarding national territory for two consecutive generations, thanked those who made loyal contributions to safeguarding and strengthening the country’s borders, and encouraged the herders to build their hometown into a beautiful one.

There used to be only one family, consisting of the two sisters and their father, in the remote location. The town now has 32 residents in nine families. It’s the country’s least populous town. Steep slopes and rugged paths make it difficult to access.

“Without peace in the territory, there will be no peaceful lives for millions of families,” Xi wrote.

He said he hoped the family would motivate more herders to put down roots in the border area “like galsang flowers”, and become guardians of Chinese territory and builders of a happy hometown.

Fresh from the 19th CPC National Congress, Xi told the family that the Party would continue to lead people of all ethnic groups toward better lives.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee had since 2012 “timely detected, decidedly handled, and resolutely eradicated” careerists and conspirators such as Zhou Yongkang, Sun Zhengcai and Ling Jihua, a report from the Party’s anti-graft body read.

It had defused “major political pitfalls” over the past five years, according to a work report of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

The report was submitted to the 19th CPC National Congress concluded earlier this week and published on Sunday.

In it, the CCDI said corruption is the biggest threat to the Party’s rule.

“Interest groups formed by intertwining political corruption and economic corruption have severely undermined political security of the Party and the country,” it read.

“Zhou Yongkang, Sun Zhengcai, Ling Jihua and others had seriously breached Party disciplines and political rules and, with ballooning political ambitions, resorted to conspiracy,” the report continued.

But the CPC Central Committee “timely detected, decidedly handled, and resolutely eradicated” these careerists and conspirators and defused “major political pitfalls.”

The CCDI, for its own part, ascertained their corruption problems, properly handled all people involved, and eliminated their pernicious influences, it said.

It also deeply analyzed the cases of Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou, Sun Zhengcai and Ling Jihua, among others, and asked the whole Party to learn from their mistakes in order to affirm the Party’s disciplines and protect the Party’s unity, it said.

Li Qiang has been appointed as the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), replacing Han Zheng, the CPC Central Committee announced Sunday.

Li will no longer serve as secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CPC. He will be replaced by Lou Qinjian, who was formerly secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee. Hu Heping has replaced Lou as secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee.

Twenty-eight telecom fraud suspects were repatriated from Cambodia to southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality Sunday morning, according to a source with the Chinese police.

The suspects are part of a group of 61 people caught in a China-Cambodia joint police operation earlier this month.

China’s Ministry of Public Security, along with police from Chongqing Municipality and Shandong Province, began investigating the telecom fraud cases in early September.

The suspects allegedly made phone calls to people on the Chinese mainland cheating victims out of money by pretending to be law enforcement or with falsely promised high-return investments.

Bank cards, computers, and mobile phones involved in the cases were also seized.

In recent years, Chinese police have tracked down Chinese nationals hiding overseas who have participated in telecom fraud, mainly targeting victims on the mainland.

The police also had 74 suspects caught and repatriated from Cambodia in another operation early October.