Eight departments including the Ministry of Education ("MOE") have recently distributed the Opinions on Guiding and Regulating the Orderly and Healthy Development of Education Mobile Internet Applications (the "Opinions").

According to the Opinions, actions will be taken to comprehensively rectify the chaotic situation for education mobile applications (Apps), fill the regulatory loopholes, standardize the lifecycle management, enhance the quality of App development and supply, and create a sound development ecology to boost the orderly and healthy development of education mobile Apps. It is anticipated to establish sound systems, norms and standards regarding administration of education mobile Apps, create the normalized regulation mechanism and preliminarily build a scientific and efficient governance system, by the end of 2020. To this end, the Opinions outline specific measures, including "establishing the record-filing system", "strengthening content development", "standardizing data management" and "ensuring network security". Among others, the Opinions stress that administrative departments of education and schools shall standardize their management of the integration of education mobile Apps in school education, adding that no fees will be charged from students or their parents for those education mobile Apps that are used in a unified manner as teaching instruments or teaching management instruments, and such Apps should not contain any commercial advertisements or games.

(Source: Ministry of Education)