A TikTok filter challenge called "Mandarin Fruit Voices" has gone viral. Essentially a straightforward Mandarin learning game with crude animations, minimalist gameplay, and fruit-based pronunciation exercises drawn from early childhood education materials, it has nonetheless captivated international users. For those who once struggled with English, the long-held dream of a world united by Chinese now appears increasingly within reach.
This article analyzes existing pathways through EqualOcean's lens, from services to hardware and C-end to B-end, delivering a comprehensive understanding of education globalization:
"Overseas Chinese remain the core market for Chinese education abroad"
"Saudi children don't attend cram schools on weekends"
"In Seoul, the number of tutoring institutions is nearly three times that of convenience stores"
"Learning outcomes are the key, while content and interaction are critical factors"
Confucius' Teachings Go Global
Since the mid-19th century, large waves of Chinese migrants have traveled to Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, drawn by opportunities like the California Gold Rush. With China's increasing global integration, even more have sought livelihoods in developed nations. According to Statista, Southeast Asia and Western countries are the primary hubs for overseas Chinese, with Indonesia hosting the largest overseas Chinese population at 11.2 million. These immigrants have laid down roots abroad, giving rise to second- and third-generation Chinese communities, which now form a massive user base for Chinese language education.
When discussing Chinese education's global expansion, Confucius Institutes undoubtedly stand out as pioneers. According to the 2023 Confucius Institute Annual Development Report, by the end of 2023, there were 496 Confucius Institutes and 757 Confucius Classrooms across 160 countries and regions. Operated under the China International Chinese Language Education Foundation, Confucius Institutes have been fostering global Chinese education since their establishment in 2004, laying a cultural foundation for Chinese enterprises expanding abroad.
Kenya, for instance, established the Confucius Institute at the University of Nairobi in 2005, making it the first in Africa. EqualOcean spoke with Chinese entrepreneurs in Kenya who noted that securing a job with a Chinese company is considered highly prestigious. Over the years, Confucius Institutes have trained a significant number of local professionals who are proficient in both Chinese and their native markets, making them invaluable assets for companies seeking localization.
Confucius Institutes have paved the way, and private education providers are now following suit. In 2021, China's "Double Reduction" (双减) policy was implemented, leading to a major overhaul of the private tutoring industry. Shortly after, the Ministry of Education published an article titled "Multiple Pathways for the Transformation of Extracurricular Training" on its official website, outlining seven directions for the transition of domestic tutoring institutions. Among these, "expanding international education services" was explicitly mentioned. The Double Reduction policy accelerated the globalization of Chinese education, pushing some institutions to expand overseas as a survival strategy.
The deeply ingrained Chinese cultural tradition of “academic excellence leading to officialdom” naturally makes overseas Chinese communities the primary target customers for educational institutions expanding abroad. However, to truly establish a foothold, embracing local users is essential.
Chen Mo, Vice President of Global Business at Classin, told EqualOcean that education markets vary significantly across regions. Classin, the world's first integrated teaching and learning platform, has users in over 160 countries and regions and maintains permanent staff in eight countries.
According to Chen, Japan's business culture is relatively conservative, with strong inertia and customer stickiness both before and after partnerships. Convincing clients to embrace new concepts requires tremendous effort in shifting mindsets and building trust, often taking up to a year. In contrast, South Korea's tutoring market is even more competitive than China's—highly fragmented, densely concentrated, and fiercely contested. In Seoul alone, the number of tutoring institutions is nearly three times that of convenience stores, and tuition fees are typically charged on a monthly basis.
Southeast Asia presents a highly promising opportunity. Chen noted that when a country's per capita GDP reaches the critical threshold of $4,000, the tutoring industry often experiences an explosive boom. Key Southeast Asian economies are now at this stage. While the current consumer base primarily consists of upper-middle-class and affluent households, the region's well-developed digital infrastructure and vast growth potential make it an exciting market for expansion.
In 2024, China and Saudi Arabia entered a diplomatic “honeymoon period”, marked by deepening trust at the governmental level and increasing cultural exchanges. Reflecting this shift, Mandarin was officially introduced as an elective foreign language in Saudi primary and secondary schools, fueling a surge in demand for Chinese education.
Wisdom Palace International Culture Communication Group, established in Ningxia in 2011, was among the first movers in this space, setting up operations in Saudi Arabia as early as 2021. It became the first private Chinese education institution to establish a presence in the country and remains one of the most professional Mandarin training providers in the region. Additionally, Wisdom Palace hosts one of Saudi Arabia's earliest HSK (Chinese Proficiency Test) centers.
To ensure high-quality and localized education, Wisdom Palace has made substantial investments in adapting its curriculum. The company developed "Smart Learning Chinese" (智慧学中文), the first-ever Arabic-language Chinese learning textbook to receive official accreditation from the Saudi Ministry of Education. The textbook features culturally tailored elements—characters dressed in traditional Saudi attire and objects such as desert dates — to create a more immersive and relatable learning experience for local students.
EqualOcean learned from Ma Ning, Dean of Saudi Wisdom Palace Chinese Education Institute, that the student demographic is predominantly local, including university students majoring in Chinese, government employees, etc., with purposes ranging from academic studies, tourism to business engagement. Particularly amid the Saudi gold rush in overseas expansion, increasing numbers of locals seek commercial ties with China. During its establishment, the institute initially faced enrollment challenges - its inaugural class had just one student. Through word-of-mouth promotion and state-media coverage, it has now accumulated over 1,000 Chinese course participants, operating campuses in Riyadh and Jeddah each exceeding 500 square meters. Unlike the intensive Chinese “chicken parenting” (鸡娃) culture, supplementary tutoring in Saudi Arabia is uncommon. Mandarin classes are considered a form of interest-based education, making the student pool even smaller. Saudi families prioritize weekends for family time, so classes are never held on weekends — even if scheduled, attendance would be low. Instead, lessons are conducted on weekday evenings. While students generally have a positive learning attitude, absenteeism is frequent. As a result, Wisdom Palace charges tuition based on course cycles, without offering refunds for unexcused absences.
"Anyone looking to expand into the Middle East's education sector visits Saudi Wisdom Palace first," Ma proudly stated. Today, education is just one part of the Wisdom Palace Group, which has expanded into international book publishing, global film distribution, and other cultural initiatives. The group is fast becoming a key cultural ambassador for Chinese influence in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East.
Hard-Soft Integration with Inclusive Tech
Soft power demands hard tech, AI adoption liberates productivity.
While education is fundamentally a To-C (consumer-facing) business, B2B (business-to-business) education solutions cater to schools, universities, and institutions. These clients have vast scales, diverse learning environments, and high demands for integrated, semi-customized solutions that merge online and offline learning, as well as software and hardware interactions.
With China's ongoing digital transformation in education, leading domestic EdTech companies have successfully expanded overseas:
Newline （Honghe Technology Co., Ltd.）holds a 23.9% market share in the U.S. education sector, ranking first.
Seewo (CVTE Co., Ltd.) collaborates with China's Center for Language Education and Cooperation to establish 50 “Seewo Smart Classrooms” worldwide. Despite a 10% decline in China's interactive smart panel shipments in H1 2024, Seewo increased its market share to 44.5%. Unlike traditional hardware-focused companies, ClassIn (翼鸥教育) adopts a holistic approach, integrating pedagogy, classroom design, and digital intelligence to provide next-generation learning environments. This software-hardware synergy ensures that institutions receive a complete digital transformation, rather than just tech upgrades.
ClassIn's journey to international markets began as a “passive choice.” Since its launch in 2016, it quickly gained traction among English training institutions in China. In key markets like the Philippines (a major source of English teachers) and Vietnam (a strong English training market), ClassIn established its brand presence even before physically expanding into Southeast Asia, signing over 100 institutions and schools.
During the pandemic, demand for online education surged. Post-pandemic, private schools and training institutions recognized the cost-saving and efficiency gains of hybrid learning, making digital transformation a natural choice.
However, the digital characteristics of education and training vary from region to region. Despite a shared emphasis on education in East Asian Confucian cultural regions, the pace of education digitalization varies significantly: Before the pandemic, the proportion of the training industry online was around 15%, while South Korea was less than half that figure, and Japan was even lower.
ClassIn future learning space and design concept
Regarding the future development trends of the education industry, Chen Mo believes that with the rapid advancement of logical reasoning AI models, traditional lecture-based teaching methods will become commercially unsustainable within the next few years. Today's children are "digital natives", growing up in smart-technology environments from birth. Consequently, the role of teachers will no longer be to "outperform" AI in lecturing, but to learn how to collaborate and allocate tasks with AI both inside and outside the classroom. Future teachers need to offload low-value, fragmented tasks such as answering questions, grading assignments, and explaining exercises, in order to provide real-time classroom experiences that focus more on student agency, locial-emotional support with humanistic warmth, data-driven supervision of long-term learning pathways
"Learning outcomes are the central objective, with content and interaction constituting the critical processes," Chen Mo concluded. Prioritizing interactive pedagogy and adhering to learning science principles form the essential prerequisite for achieving cross-border scalability across educational stages and organizational types within strictly regulated environments. Nevertheless, every new market penetration necessitates product-solution alignment with host countries' entrenched educational regulations and commercial ecosystems, empowering clients' smart-tech transition with minimal institutional friction. Stated differently, "the key to globalization lies precisely in localization."
Online Access Equals Learning
With internet and AI advancements, educational scenarios have extended from offline to online. This scenario proliferation doesn't cannibalize the offline education market but rather unlocks new educational possibilities, addressing unmet demand gaps.
According to Statista, the global online education market reached $166.55 billion in 2023, with three major segments: online learning platforms、online university education、professional certification programs.
Between 2017 and 2023, the market saw a 16.8% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate), but future growth is expected to moderate to 9.1% CAGR from 2023-2028. Notably, online learning platforms will experience a much slower 3.7% CAGR.
Beyond pandemic-driven surge, online learning platforms show subpar growth. EqualOcean analysis indicates while video courses exist, K12 education fundamentally requires direct pedagogical interaction between teachers and students. Though pre-recorded content reduces marginal production costs, the indispensable "human immediacy" and real-time feedback of live instruction remain irreplaceable – a truth well understood by industry practitioners and families with blended learning experience. Thus, the sector's expansion will inevitably follow a steady yet measured trajectory.
The AI wave permeates all industries, bringing new opportunities and version upgrades to education globalization. Educational applications, being more lightweight than traditional teaching, have broken free from physical space constraints, making learning readily accessible. According to Business of Apps statistics, educational apps generated $5.93 billion in revenue in 2023, currently accounting for merely 4% of the entire online education market revenue. However, with technological advancements including integration with VR and AI, their revenue scale will inevitably see further growth.
Among these, problem-solving educational apps, as China's earliest first-generation educational apps, have accumulated mature expertise and technology through successive rounds of market consolidation and validation. Rooted in China's vast K12 demographic and exam-oriented education question banks, these apps have gained strong student affinity. Early-stage photo recognition relied on OCR technology, while current AI iterations not only enhance recognition efficiency and accuracy but also provide diversified answer explanations. Chinese enterprises in this sector have already embarked on global expansion.
Conclusion
Education is the perpetual subject for humanity and national development. With the advancement of the global economy, demand for higher-quality education continues to rise. Knowledge knows no borders – education globalization is breaking down national barriers, delivering fairer learning opportunities and superior educational resources to benefit the world.
