China Private Education Forum was held in Beijing on Nov 29, 2008. Luo Fuhe, Vice Chairman of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and Executive Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), attended the forum.　

As is known, in the past 30 years of reform and opening-up, CAPD has continuously devoted efforts to the development of Chinese private education as its key function of participation in the management of state affairs, focusing on promoting the legislation on private education, reforming the management system and improving teachers' quality. CAPD's speeches and proposals delivered to CPPCC in recent years were all concerned with the promotion of private education.

The Forum is co-sponsored by the Central Committee of CAPD and the Association of Chinese Private Education and People's Political Consultative News (PPCN), untaken by Education Online Weekly under PPCN. The Forum consisted of three parts: the Opening Ceremony, the Theme Report “Background and Trend”, and the Theme Talk “30 Years: Review and Outlook”. Experts at the Forum discussed the background and trend of Chinese private education from different aspects and viewpoints, covering the topics as the relationship between private education and the rise of China, private education's new prospects and challenges, the inevitability of private education under the public financial prospects, the future trend of Chinese education and the challenges and opportunities for private education, the promotion of private education's sustainable development, and etc. Private education undertakers and managers also had a thorough discussion and exchanged ideas on the infrastructure of private education, development of regional educational infrastructure and the innovation of management system, private kindergartens, training bodies, and private higher education.

Wang Zuoshu, member of Standing Committee of National People's Congress (NPC), practitioners and expert of Chinese private education attended the Forum. Mr. Zhengdong Zhu, president and chairman of China Distance Education Limited (CDEL, NYSE Arca ticker: DL) addressed the opening ceremony. In his speech, he reviewed the development of Chinese distance education and he also forecasted and marked out the prospects of Chinese distance education.

CDEL was founded in 2000 when the distance education was about to take off. On July 30, 2008, CDEL was successfully listed on NYSE –it was the first company dealing with distance education in China landing on NYSE. Second to New Orient, CDEL has been one of the two educational companies on NYSE and it opened a new era for Chinese private education. As the leader of the industry, CDEL has epitomized the development of Chinese distance education.

The fast growing Internet has a broad influence on our living habits and changed our way of thinking; meanwhile, it also bears new opportunities for the development of Chinese private education. Particularly, the distance education began to boom, which has changed the way of traditional classroom-based education and broke through its physical limit on locations and times to provide learners with more flexibility and interest. As people are getting closer to Internet, distance education is recognized and accepted by more and more people and has been growing into a potentially booming industry. Since 2000, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has actively promoted the construction of public service system for distance education and the management of the experimental work as well as the quality control; it also encouraged more and more students to take their courses online. The distance education system in China was independently developed and the industry is rather new, so there is no experience to learn from. CDEL opened a new way for this industry, when people were doubtful with internet industry, frightened by great bubbles in the internet-based economy.

CDEL started its business with www.chinaacc.com. At the beginning of its foundation, people were not familiar with distance education and were worrying about the liability of internet. In May 2000, only dozens of participants took our courses and paid about 3,800 RMB for the first session. In September, we collected about 40,000 RMB for the second session. On the consolidated report in 2001, the revenue rocketed to 400,000 RMB; while later in 2002, the annual revenue soared to 4 million RMB. In 2003, although affected by SARS, the revenue jumped to 13 million. In 2004, the revenue overtook 20 million. These figures were a showcase of the fast growing distance education. The biggest barrier to this industry is TIME: our training quality could only be tested through the exams our course participants had taken afterwards and get popular through their word-of-mouth referrals.

In this way, Chinaacc.com stepped out of the difficulty in a short time. With the experience we got from it, in 2003, we launched www.chinalawedu.com; in 2004, we launched www.cnedu.cn; in 2005, we launched www.med66.com and acquired www.zikao365.com--now we have covered 13 different industries and landed on American capital market.

CDEL was the first to set up and successively maintained a customer-service call center for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, where above 200 dedicated members are always readily prepared to provide exceptional service for any course participant. For the sake of an easier payment, CDEL initiated Study Cards as a way to collect fees and was also the first to adopt the "Learn first, pay next" mechanism to gain participants' trust.

In 2003, CDEL innovated "Questions and Answers System for Online Teaching" in its industry, in which for each online school, the participants can communicate with their lecturers and experts in relevant industries, and even they can communicate with sound. For any question the participants may raise, CDEL ensures to provide an correct answer within 24 hours. The system employs the interaction the internet bears to provide the participant with various tailored service. With this system, CDEL exhibits the traits and advantages of distance education and is propelling the industry to a new high.

At present, nearly 1 million participants are studying in CDEL annually, in which www.chinaacc.com has been far ahead of others in its industry, taking 70% of the market for online accounting training. Every year, above half a million people will take the CPA examination, among which 150,000 are studying on www.chinaacc.com. The core competence for the development of CDEL is that we continuously uphold the Participants Focused concept, which has been gradually accepted as the norm of the industry and which also promotes the high-speed development of distance education.