ByteDance Shuts Down Tutoring Operations After China Crackdown

TikTok owner ByteDance told employees on Thursday it planned to lay off staff in its education business and close some of its tutoring operations after China imposed sweeping regulations on the sector, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Photo Insert: ByteDance staff walking by the company's headquarters in Beijing, China

China last month issued rules barring curriculum-based tutoring for profit, aiming to ease financial pressures that have contributed to low birth rates but have left private education firms facing significant business impact.

ByteDance will lay off some teachers, sales, and advertising staff in the education unit and will shut its curriculum-focused preschool and K12 tutoring businesses in China to be compliant with the regulations, according to one of the sources and a third source.

The closures include the shuttering of its one-on-one English online classes app Gogokid, two of the sources said.

On Thursday, the app was not available to be downloaded from Apple's App Store in China. ByteDance, whose hit products include short video apps TikTok and Douyin as well as news aggregator Toutiao, had hoped to find one of its next successes in education, making it one of its top priorities over the past year.

It established the education unit Dali, which translates to "forceful strength" in Chinese, last October and runs several tutoring apps aimed at preschool kids and K12 students. The unit has more than 10,000 employees and its other products include school courses tutoring app Qingbei.

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