Recently, I’ve been doing one-on-one coaching at a private training agency for students preparing for the second round of the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) recruitment exams. I teach for three and a half hours every evening, and they pay me 200 RMB (approx. £22).

The fact that the pay is abysmal isn’t even the biggest issue. The real problem lies in how they charge the students. They offer two main packages: the “Excellence Plan,” which costs a staggering 120,000 RMB (£13,000) but includes unlimited one-on-one sessions; and the “Contract Class,” which costs 70,000 RMB (£7,500), but with a catch—students must pay an additional 450 RMB (£50) for every one-on-one session.

Yesterday, I arranged a private session with one of the students in the afternoon. My plan was to fly under the agency’s radar; the student would pay me 300 RMB directly. It seemed like a win-win: I’d make an extra hundred, and they’d save 150. However, the student didn’t quite catch on. When they asked the coordinator for leave, they explicitly mentioned they were “getting extra tutoring from me.” The agency immediately “benevolently” stepped in to help me collect the 450 RMB fee from the parents.

It didn’t stop there. When it came time to calculate my earnings, the agency classified this as an “extra lesson.” They claimed I had “misused” my afternoon lesson-preparation time to teach a student not enrolled in the “Excellence Plan”. For those three and a half hours of work, they only gave me 120 RMB.

To put it simply:

Student pays 450 → Agency pockets 330 → I receive 120

Naturally, I’m annoyed that the 300 RMB I should have earned was whittled down to 120. But beyond my personal loss, what truly unsettles me is the predatory nature of this business. Most of these students are vocational college graduates from humble backgrounds. In China’s job market, they already face significant discrimination, and they are doing everything in their power to climb the social ladder. They have staked everything—tens, or even hundreds of thousands of RMB, potentially their family’s entire life savings—on these courses to get a stable job at the State Grid. They believe they are buying a “cure” to change their fate, unaware that the medicine is being served with a side of their own lifeblood. Meanwhile, as the one actually doing the hard work of teaching, I receive a smaller cut than the agency that simply sits back and collects the rent.

In Chinese literature, we call this “eating buns soaked in human blood”—profiting off the desperation and suffering of others.

On this single transaction, the agency made a net profit of 330 RMB for doing absolutely nothing. It is, quite frankly, unacceptable. I have already advised the student to be more “flexible” when asking for leave in the future. I’ve also had a word with their coordinator, making it clear she should look the other way regarding our private arrangements. Given that she’s also a working-class employee with performance targets tied to student results, I doubt she’ll be foolish enough to jeopardize her own KPIs.

That said, this agency had better watch its step. The joke I made during “lesson prep”—about the teaching assistants forming a temporary union and going on strike for better pay—might just become a self-fulfilling prophecy one day.

I can’t help but wonder who the real “ruthless capitalists” are meant to be. This agency seems to have mastered the art of the blood-soaked business quite effectively.