Yu Minhong on New Oriental's Transformation: My Personal Tendency is Usually Passive Change

On the morning of January 24, at the 2026 Chongli Forum, New Oriental founder Yu Minhong stated, "In recent years, everyone has seen that I am no longer solely in the education sector. The national policy adjustments in 2021 gave me the opportunity to explore other fields."

He mentioned, "In terms of internet technology and artificial intelligence R&D, an institution like New Oriental cannot make any significant contributions. However, there is great potential in application areas, such as integrating the internet and AI into education, as well as the other fields I have now entered, like agricultural products and cultural tourism." Yu Minhong said frankly, "In 2021, I happened to be 60 years old, reaching retirement age. I should have been enjoying a comfortable life, but a sudden change occurred. There are two types of change in the world: one is actively seeking change, the other is being forced to change. My personal tendency is usually passive change, but once I realize change is unavoidable, I also have the ability to transform it into active change as quickly as possible. Therefore, after the 2021 education policy adjustments, everyone witnessed a series of changes at New Oriental. Our former entity, New Oriental Online, which only did education business, even became an independent listed company in Hong Kong. But after 2021, the company's business was essentially zeroed out. Subsequently, we considered either shutting down the company completely or doing something completely unrelated to education. In the end, as everyone knows, we launched EAST BUY." He stated, "EAST BUY is not just about selling agricultural products. From the very beginning, I set two goals for it, aiming to address two pain points. The first pain point is to solve food safety issues on the consumer end. Although EAST BUY's scale is still small, with sales of only around 100 billion, it has indeed gained a certain reputation; choosing EAST BUY's products is generally something you can feel assured about. The second pain point is to solve the problem at the source, which is helping farmers, herders, and fishermen increase their income. We are doing quite well in this aspect now, and I believe this counts as doing a good deed."