Truth can't be told
Once upon a time, there was beautiful land call Spring. The Kingdom was growing rapidly as more and more outsiders came to visit and learn the language of this lovely place.
For the demands of the market and encouragement of free competition, the King assigned 12 knights the unique right to set up schools especially for outsiders. As time went by, free competition turned into price fights. The knights suffered and complained to the King. The King heard the news and punished some knights who had deliberately tried to undercut the other knights. So the King decided it was time to find a single price for this market and standardize the price in case further fights occurred.
At a round table meeting among the knights, the King discussed unreasonable price-cutting competition. All the knights accepted the King's kindness and requirements and promised to get along well. Also, a new market price was suggested and all the knights agreed to put into action at the same time. The King was happy and thought that would be the end of the fights.
But when the time came, the King was shocked to find out that new fights had occurred as some of the knights had betrayed the agreement. The schools who had followed the agreement became known as "cheats" in the outsiders' eyes as other knights quickly turned around and announced they would never increase their prices. Quite reasonably all the outsiders thought it was just a few knights' conspiracy to cheat them out of more money. Even the local residents of the Kingdom assumed it was just a few knights trying to "cheat" and reported it straightaway on the news.
The King was stuck in a bad situation. If the King denied the meeting, it meant he would be betraying the knights who had followed his orders, and the ones who hadn't followed his orders would be seen as heroes and benefit the most from this chaos; while if the King confirmed the meeting, his image could be affected in many ways.
What could he do? He decided it was better to keep quiet, and leave the market to find its own balance and let the story end by itself. Fortunately the fights start to quiet down. The story comes to an end. Some benefit some suffer. The winning side were the outsiders who stood up and fought for themselves. They understood that reputation is something neither the knights nor the King wanted to lose.
Where is the truth? For some reason we can never find out as whoever knows the truth can't tell.
I have been following these posts from the beginning and I too have had my school tell me of an increase. I attend rainbow downtown. They informed me, last week, that as of September 1st all schools are now required to raise prices to 8000. I have friends at Dong Fang who have told me that they too were told of an increase. Therefore to me it seems the most logical thing is that the strange posts by people claiming to be teachers or principal at Dong Fang are either people just defending Dong Fang, or the school has back tracked and is lying to cover up their stupidity.
And to "Fairyteller". That was the stupidest thing I have ever read. First of all, the earlier "fairy tail" was fun and original. This time it's a cheap knock off. Second, you think less than 8000 is undercutting? this ain't beijing. 4000 is a good kunming standard. Third, you must be new to China to be at all optimistic about this corrupt and broken society. And fourth, to reiterate my opening sentence to you, that was the stupidest thing I have ever read. Get yourself jerked around by someone trying to not only cheat you, but really shove it up your ass and let's see how you feel about the situation.
@fairyteller
Your allegory is just insane and has so many contradictions that which makes me wonder if you have any real basic understanding of how capitalism and market economy works.
If the "King" had ordained 12 knights to compete against each other, he had achieved that, why would there be a need for price fixing? It's counter-intuitive to say "I want free competition as long as everyone has the same price". That isn't free market, that's fixing the market. The whole idea of free competition is find the most cost-effective/optimal price for a service/product. In other words, for any given product/service, there is a cost associated with producing that product/service. Due to competition, the price cannot be wantonly increased and so to remain profitable, the cost of production must be lowered. However, there is a minimum to the cost of which if you go below, the quality of your product/service will suffer and no will will buy regardless of price. Anyone selling goods below this minimum will go bankrupt as he is turning a negative profit and if he turn out products of inferior quality he will soon find himself without a buyer and hence the price will remain stable at that price point. So in a nutshell, free competition forces all the players to race to this point and stay there. There are also incentives for players to find innovative ways of lowering their cost while maintaining quality, but that's another point for another day.
This "king" doesn't sound like a king at all, more like the head of a drug cartel controlling a monopoly. Bottom line, I don't know who is the villain in this story, maybe the government bureau, maybe KLEC, maybe another school. All I can say is this is a very typical Chinese behavior. On the one hand the governments say they support a free market and open competition to benefit the consumers, on the other, they enact policies or encourage practices which protects certain beneficiaries from competition by handing them monopolies. It isn't a coincidence that in a country of 1.3 billion people, you only have 3 carriers to choose from when you want mobile service, where as in the US with a population of 400 million you have 6-8 national carriers and a total of over 180 wireless companies large and small. (en.wikipedia.org/[...]
The real truth is that no one here in China really understand how market economy work or wouldn't fully embrace it. They need the control, they want mechanisms in place where they can pull the strings from behind the curtain without being seen. The whole idea of capitalism is free competition and let the market decide. Why did the "King" only assign 12 "knights" unique rights? Why can't ALL knights have the rights to setup? And when he called the meeting, why didn't he invite the "Peasants" to see if they feel the knights deserve the increase? And who made the king the king in the first place?
Just some thoughts.
Cheers~