Yu Minhong (Michael Yu)

Yu Minhong (Michael Yu) — founder profiled in the Chinese Founder Ledger — is documented as follows: founded New Oriental, China's largest private off-campus education company, and after Beijing's 2021 ban on for-profit tutoring devastated the business, personally pivoted into live-streaming e-commerce on Douyin, an initiative he called the 'third revolution of business.' The profile is grounded in the 2 sources indexed for this founder.

Yu Minhong (Michael Yu)'s role is documented as: founder, Chairman and Chief Executive, New Oriental Education & Technology Group SCMP's December 29, 2021 report describes him as 'the founder, chairman and chief executive of New Oriental Education & Technology Group' (research date: 2026-08-23).

By June 2022, since for-profit private tutoring had been banned the previous year, Yu had pivoted New Oriental into live streaming, which he termed the 'third revolution of business'; a live stream featuring the New Oriental chairman and an English-speaking host selling agricultural goods ranked among the top 10 in sales on Douyin on the Friday referenced in the report.

Yu's live-streaming pivot combined his company's core competency (English-language education) with e-commerce, bringing back English teaching content as a differentiator within his agricultural-goods livestreaming sessions.

Following Beijing's crackdown on the once high-flying off-campus tutoring sector, Yu made his debut as a live-streaming e-commerce host on ByteDance-owned Douyin, where he reiterated plans to launch a live-streaming e-commerce platform for farm products.

By mid-2022, New Oriental's Douyin live-streaming sessions featuring Yu and English-teaching content were ranking among the platform's top 10 in sales, indicating a commercially significant pivot away from the banned tutoring business, though the report did not quantify overall company revenue recovery.