By Li Muzi
China’s school corruption was laid bare on April 22, 2026, when a former school principal from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, published a video statement that spread rapidly across Chinese social media. His message was unambiguous: he would rather beg for money online than return to running a school. The job, he said, had required him to surrender both his conscience and his freedom.
The video was amplified by the prominent social media commentator known by the handle “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher” (李老师不是你老师), who has built a large following documenting censorship and state abuses in China from outside the country. The former principal’s account, delivered calmly and in detail, described a system of institutional corruption so pervasive that participation was a condition of employment.
The graft machine: enrollment kickbacks, cafeteria rackets, and forced test-prep
The former principal laid out the racket in detail. Enrollment came first. Refusing to work with local “enrollment brokers,” middlemen who sell school placements to families willing to pay, carried a direct personal threat: “I would face dangers to my physical safety,” he said. These brokers operate outside any official framework, extracting payments from families and routing kickbacks back into the school’s administrative structure.
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The cafeteria and logistics operations were expected to function as profit centers for administrators and their associates. Anyone who resisted would be forced out. “Many people would pressure me to step down,” he said. Campus canteen stalls and small shops were to be awarded to the principal’s relatives and personal connections; withholding those contracts meant social and professional exclusion. “I would not even deserve to be their relative,” he said.
Teachers were not spared. Principals who refused to drive staff toward extreme exam-drilling methods, including what he described as “frenzied cramming” and abusive discipline, up to and including verbal humiliation and physical punishment, lost their positions. Exam statistics trumped everything else.
When inspectors arrived from higher administrative bodies, the school was required to stage a performance of cleanliness and order: spotless steps, perfectly arranged desks. Failure to deliver the performance meant losing the job. “So I didn’t want to participate in this corruption,” he concluded, and left.
After he refused to go along, colleagues threatened him. He left the city where he had worked for more than a decade and joined parents in a public advocacy campaign conducted through online platforms, the channels Chinese citizens turn to when formal legal recourse is unavailable.
Teachers across China respond: ‘This is exactly what it’s like’
The video generated a large response from current and former educators in China, many of whom posted accounts of their own experiences.
One commenter identifying herself as a teacher at a key provincial high school in Kunming wrote that the former principal’s account matched her own experience precisely, even as a non-administrator. “Although I am not a leader, everything he said is true,” she wrote. “I have been a teacher for ten years. In recent years I’ve realized that teachers are a profession everyone looks down on, that anyone can step on.” She also described a parallel prohibition against supplementary teaching materials: “Teaching aids are like drugs. You can’t even touch them. At any moment a leader might come by to inspect.”
A second commenter, who identified himself as a former teacher, offered a single line: “I also used to be a teacher. I agree with everything you said.”
A third, writing under the name “Mr. Candle,” said he had resigned after rising to deputy vice-principal. “China’s so-called ‘education’ barely deserves half the character for ‘teach,’” he wrote, “and the other half, ‘cultivating,’ has no connection to what actually happens.” In Chinese, the word for education combines two characters: one meaning “to teach,” the other “to cultivate.” He was saying schools deliver neither.
A fourth commenter put it more directly: “This Kunming principal is incredibly brave. He would rather beg online than continue participating in educational corruption: enrollment kickbacks, cafeteria concessions, fake hygiene inspections, and abusive exam cramming. The Chinese education system has rotted to its roots. Parents and teachers are both victims.”
Five school principals investigated in 6 days as the Party’s own records confirm the pattern
The former principal’s account did not surface in a vacuum. Within days of his video circulating online, the Chinese-language news outlet Phoenix News reported that Party disciplinary authorities had announced corruption investigations against at least 5 school principals across different provinces in a single 6-day window in April 2026.
On April 13, Liu Shaofeng, the former Party secretary and principal of Xupu County Second Middle School in Hunan Province, was placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law,” the standard Party formulation that typically precedes expulsion and criminal prosecution.
On April 16, two more cases were announced simultaneously. Shen Maozhong, the former Party secretary and principal of Jinshan Middle School in Chaozhou city, Guangdong Province, was placed under investigation. So was Yuan Fangzheng, the former deputy Party secretary and principal of Zhixing School in Hefei city, Anhui Province.
On April 17, Yin Weichuan, the former Party secretary and sub-county-level principal of Funan Experimental Middle School in Fuyang city, Anhui Province, was placed under investigation.
On April 18, a fifth case was announced: Ye Guixin, the former principal of Pingshan Central Primary School in Huidong County, Huizhou city, Guangdong Province, was removed from his post.
A separate case from more than a month earlier added further context. Wang Xiaolong, the former Party secretary and principal of Shexian Middle School in Huangshan city, Anhui Province, was expelled from the Party.
A single case in Anhui Province pulled 31 people into a corruption network
The most detailed picture of how these networks operate came from a case centered on the former principal of a middle school in Huangshan city, Anhui Province, identified in reports only by his surname, Wang. Investigated in 2025 and prosecuted in early 2026, Wang’s case was described by Party disciplinary authorities as a “cliff-collapse style” corruption scandal, a term used when an entire institutional structure is found to be rotten rather than a single individual.
The case involved kickbacks on school uniform procurement, corrupt dealing in construction and renovation contracts, and related offenses. Wang was expelled from the Party in February 2026 and transferred to the judicial system for criminal prosecution. A total of 31 individuals were investigated; 70 were subjected to Party or administrative discipline. In a single school’s ecosystem, 84 people were implicated.
Party disciplinary reports have repeatedly identified the same structural corruption zones in Chinese schools: construction projects, bulk procurement, cafeteria management, textbook and supplementary material orders, and school uniform contracts. Each is a revenue stream. Each operates, in practice, as a form of private extraction from a public institution.
China’s schools have become personal cash machines for administrators
Under the CCP’s system of governance, institutions that are formally public have been functionally privatized by the officials who run them. Schools are administered for the benefit of their administrators. Parents pay; teachers comply or leave; and children receive whatever is left after the extraction is complete.
Online commenters summarized it with a phrase that spread widely after the video: “Schools have become cash machines for officials.” Uniforms, cafeterias, and construction contracts are the instruments.
