(source: www.gov.cn) On January 22 the General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China (PRC) issued a notice stating that private kindergartens in urban residential communities must all be handed over to local education authorities to be turned into public or non-profit kindergartens. China currently has a system in which public kindergartens , which are run by local authorities and use material provided by the government, compete with private ones, which enjoy a certain independence and can choose their own textbooks. Over the past two decades private kindergartens have become a booming business. According to Beijing-based business consultancy ResearchInChina, between 2003 and 2015 private kindergartens grew from 55,000 to 143,000, while only 15,000 public kindergartens were opened during the same period. From 1997 to 2017, the number of children attending public kindergartens decreased from 95% to 44%. However...