When money runs education...

Several children, some as young as three, who attended RYB New World Kindergarten in Beijing’s Chaoyang district told their parents they’d been fed pills that made them “drowsy,” jabbed with needles as punishment and forced by naked adults to strip naked, according to local media.


The school is run by RYB Education, a company that is based in Beijing but listed in New York. It operates kindergartens and day care centers in about 300 Chinese cities.


China’s Ministry of Education said on Thursday that it had launched a special investigation into the operation of kindergartens nationwide, Reuters reported. Beijing’s municipal education authority said that it had begun its own probe.


RYB Education, whose shares plummeted on Friday by almost 40 percent on the New York Stock Exchange as the abuse allegations made global headlines, apologized in a statement and said it was cooperating with police in their investigation.


As such abuse allegations have grown more common in China, the public has become increasingly incensed at what many now see as a systemic problem. The latest RYB allegations have touched a particular nerve. According to Reuters, there was more than 76 million mentions of “RYB” on China’s popular WeChat messaging service on Thursday alone. And that was despite apparent attempts by Chinese authorities to tamp down on some of the fury by deleting related videos and posts online.