Hard choices ahead for homeschoolers in communist China

Editor’s note: Because of the dangers of homeschooling in China, WORLD has changed the names of the sources to protect their safety.

Sheila Li is studying for her PhD in Australia, but this summer she visited her home country of China and met with a friend, Pastor Zhang, who defies the Chinese Communist Party’s rules in at least two ways. He pastors an unregistered house church, and he homeschools his children.

Compulsory education laws in China require children to attend public school for 9 years from ages 6 to 15. Homeschooling is illegal. But many Christian parents want to teach their children from the Bible, and they object to the government schools’ curriculum that promote atheism, evolution, and the beliefs of the Chinese Communist Party. Estimates from the 21st Century Education Research Institute show that in 2019, 20,000 families had begun or were interested in homeschooling in China. Actual numbers of homeschoolers is difficult to establish. Some Chinese homeschooling parents say that U.S. student visa restrictions increase their worries for their children’s post-secondary studies.

Just before 8 a.m. on a Sunday in June, Li entered a nondescript office building in northern China to attend a house church worship service. House churches find it increasingly difficult to meet in homes because of an influx of parishioners and added surveillance at apartment buildings. Besides Li, about 20 congregants attended the church’s first service of the day. It is against the law for anyone under 18 to attend church, so all attendees were adults—except for Pastor Zhang’s three teenagers.

Two decades ago, Zhang and Li both attended a Christian youth group and served on missions teams together in rural China. Li worked with Zhang’s wife at an international school. There’s a phrase in the local language that translates to 9-9-6. Families work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. Between Zhang’s children’s long school days, his wife’s work, and his evening pastoral duties, the family spent little time together.

So eight years ago, his wife quit her job, bought Christian textbooks from someone in a social media group, and began to homeschool. It’s an irrevocable educational choice, because families cannot opt back in once they have left the state system. Zhang’s teenage children officially have a third grade education. Their only hope of getting a college degree—and a well-paying job—is to be accepted at a university outside China. The Zhangs had hoped their children could go to the United States, but as global politics shift, Zhang wonders where his children will study.

Two years ago, Zhang’s wife died. Amid his grief, Zhang struggled to homeschool his children and keep up with preaching and helping his congregation. “So I bought some books for them and I gave him some instructions,” said Li. She also organized online tutoring with friends overseas to assist them in English.

Getting curriculum into the country is difficult. Authorities arrested one man who sold Abeka homeschool books several years ago. He is still imprisoned, according to one source. Many curriculums produced in Western countries come with patriotic overtones or blatant religious messages.

“The government is afraid of the universal law of value, of love, equality, and freedom,” Li said. They’ve begun to crack down on teaching children English, “however, like everything in China, people do it anyway, but it’s just become more difficult.”

Red Lily, who uses a pseudonym when speaking and writing about her adopted home of China, has lived in the country and homeschooled there since 2016. She often interacts with families with young children who are considering homeschooling or have already begun. Red Lily said one of the blessings of living in a country with such a large population is that sometimes things fall through the cracks.

“We know families that have … registered a child in another area away from where they’re living,” she said. When authorities visit to ask why the child hasn’t attended school, the parents point out that it’s too far away. “Generally, there’s not a lot of follow-up with that,” she said, because there’s not much interaction between cities.

Other families find that approach too dishonest. “They, by God’s grace, have been able to fly under the radar,” she said. How to navigate the law and their consciences is a topic of discussion amongst local believers. She doesn’t chime in on those conversations because she comes from another country and context, but she does pray with them.

In China, Buddhist and Christian parents prioritize English education so that their children can get into the best schools abroad. But not every family that chooses to homeschool has a long-term plan.

“Some of them don’t know. For some of them, it really is a step of faith,” said Red Lily. “Because we’re in the south, some of them choose to go to places like Hong Kong. I know the U.K. is a popular choice for people to go, or Australia or New Zealand,” Red Lily said.

In 2024, an estimated 280,000 Chinese students studied in the United States and 108,000 in the U.K. But in May, as tariff wars began between China and the United States, the Trump administration announced it would start revoking Chinese students’ visas, especially for students who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Li said Zhang knows seven students who applied for U.S. visas in recent months. Six were denied.

Sending children abroad for college is also a financial hardship for many families “unless they have connections in another country,” Red Lily said.

Li said she plans to help Zhang’s children with their university applications. She also hopes to set up a trust fund in whichever country Zhang’s children are accepted, since Zhang’s income as a house church pastor is sufficient for living in China but not to also support his children overseas.

In the end, Li said, Zhang’s end goal is not that his children study overseas. “He hopes the children can grow in their knowledge of God and that their study can prepare them to serve the Lord in whatever occupation they have in the future,” she said.