China’s extracurricular education sector for primary school students has developed rapidly, especially in large cities. Piano, painting, chess, skating and other lessons have sprung up in major shopping districts. Expensive summer camps claiming to broaden children’s horizons are also popular. Spending on children’s education is rising each year.

A survey of Shanghai early education (up to age 6) conducted by the Shanghai Association for Quality found that the parents of 60 percent of children under age 6 had made them attend extracurricular classes. For children between 4 and 6, the proportion exceeded 70 percent.

International market research company Nielsen found that people born in the 1980s are the biggest consumers in China. As most of them are married, spending on family occupies a large share of their expenses—children’s education in particular, which accounts for 55 percent.

Some parents on social media complain that they are not raising children but “cash burners”.

According to Liu Chenglian, a family education expert, some parents spend whatever it takes to give their kids an edge, but sometimes they just blindly follow a trend and overschedule their children.