China's education chiefs have decreed that underage arts students are no longer to take part in commercial performances following a scandal which saw dance students hired to work in erotic dance clubs last year.

 

New Ministry of Education regulations ban all primary and secondary schools from permitting their students to perform in commercial shows or events.

 

In November, a dance school in Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was found to have dispatched 22 underage girls to give erotic performances at clubs. School authorities tried to disguise the work as "internships", but the news broke costing the school its license.  

 

However, school chairman Guo Guisheng argued that allowing the girls to take part in such activities was by no means inappropriate, even daring to label it "a good deed" since many of them came from poor backgrounds.

 

The regulations accuse certain schools of warping the purposes of art education and harming the healthy development of students.

 

Music, singing and dance schools have boomed in China with parents increasingly of the opinion that a well-rounded child is a culturally-aware child. However, venal educational authorities have abused this trend by profiting from commercial performances by students and by charging entry fees for exams or competitions.

 

These activities have impaired the children's normal study and appreciation of the. Regulations have sought to address this by banning a recruitment process based on performance tests.

 

(Xinhua News Agency June 15, 2007)