Online tutorials can't replace schools

Xue Zhaofeng, a professor from Peking University, reportedly has more than 170,000 subscribers to his online teaching course and could be making about 35 million yuan ($5.3 million) a year. Xue is only one among the hundreds of online teachers making millions of yuan a month. According to iResearch, an agency specializing in internet data collection, the online education market was worth 156 billion yuan by the end of last year, and it is expected to reach 260 billion yuan by 2019.

Online education has also found mention in this year's Central Government Work Report, which Premier Li Keqiang delivered to the annual National People's Congress. We can thus conclude that online education not only has huge economic potential, it also enjoys government support.

Online education has become popular because of the huge demand, and the entire market for providing training for primary and secondary school pupils is worth 800 billion yuan. There are reasons for that. The majority of Chinese parents attach great importance to education, and are willing to pay for extra courses to ensure their children's academic success. And parents who are willing to pay for such courses would also pay for online courses.