WHEN TYPHOON PEARL was lashing Shanghai last month, investment consultant Jiang Nan was speeding through the city in one of the few taxis braving the storm. She was taking her six-year-old daughter, Qianqian, to classes in an eMBA programme.
Qianqian isn't a child prodigy, although Jiang, like most parents, hopes her daughter will achieve spectacular results. The letter 'e' in eMBA stands for 'early' rather than 'executive', and the course is the latest pre-school education programme to make a splash in Shanghai.
Qianqian is reluctant to attend class that night - she keeps asking her mother: 'Do we have to go, mum?' - but Jiang is pressing ahead: after all, she's paid 20,000 yuan for the two-year course.
Thanks to the central government's one-child policy, mainland parents typically lavish all their attention on their sole offspring. And with education viewed as a key to success, they're willing to spend huge sums to ensure their child has the best schooling.
John Li, an import/export trader with a five-year-old son, reflects that view. 'I want my son to be extraordinary since he's the only one I have,' he says. 'He's going to take over my business, so I want him to have the best education, regardless of how much I have to spend.'
It's a sentiment that has made China one of the world's largest and most profitable markets for children's education. According to the latest statistics from China's Education Bureau, 60 per cent of families in major cities spend one-third of their income on children's education. And increasingly, a significant portion is going towards pre-school classes, sometimes for children as young as one.