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The “Double Reduction” policy, implemented by the Chinese government in 2021, aimed to reduce the burden facing parents and students by restricting after-school tutoring. The policy had enormous implications for teachers working in China’s shadow education industry, hundreds of thousands of whom were forced to leave their jobs. Grounded in theories of language teacher identity, emotions, and agency, this study investigates the Double Reduction policy’s impact on Mainland Chinese English teachers employed by private tutoring institutes at the time of the policy’s announcement. Based on semi-structured interviews with teachers, the analysis focuses on teachers’ emotional responses and exercise of agency, the impact of the policy on their personal and professional identities, as well as their subsequent career trajectories. The findings illustrate an ostensible contradiction: participants recount anxiety and despair at the policy’s announcement and criticize the policy’s impact on China’s education climate while simultaneously expressing positive emotions to its impact on them personally. These findings are explained with reference to teachers’ negative feelings about working for private institutes as well as their internalization of neoliberal subjectivities. By providing insights into how teachers responded to and experienced the Double Reduction policy, this study contributes to scholarship on language teacher identity as well as scholarship on China’s evolving language education policies.

English tutors’ emotions, agency, and identity development in the aftermath of China’s Double Reduction policy