Students stranded in Beijing get no answers from Seattle-based program

When a Seattle-based Chinese language program in Beijing suddenly canceled classes and shut down, more than a dozen students were left stranded, though they had prepaid their tuition and housing.

Now, the company's Seattle headquarters is closed, its phones disconnected and its Web site claims it has filed bankruptcy. The owners have moved to Sweden.

Most of the 67 students — from all over the world — have either gone home or arranged for classes at other schools in Beijing, at additional expense.

And for many who prepaid, there is growing frustration as they try to recover more than $100,000 in combined payments for tuition, housing and other expenses.

For the past 10 years, WorldLink Education has maintained offices in six countries and has provided quality language instruction. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Al Roker of "The Today Show" took Chinese classes at the Academy of Chinese Language Studies (ACLS), the host school for the language classes.

But on Oct. 15, WorldLink students found the doors of their ACLS classrooms locked, with no explanation save a one-page flier saying classes would resume after the weekend. Within days, power to the school was disconnected and students who also had arranged housing through WorldLink were evicted from their apartments for unpaid rent.

The students heard nothing from WorldLink or ACLS until a one-paragraph e-mail arrived Oct. 23. In it, a WorldLink official who worked at the Beijing host school said she was waiting for an update from Seattle, and that classes would resume once teachers were paid.

"That ticked us off, really left us hanging," said Jed Kim, a student from California who paid for 40 weeks of classes and received only nine and a half. "They didn't give us a timeline or anything."

Anders Johnson, who along with his wife owns WorldLink and serves as its president and CEO, spent several weeks denying responsibility for the closure — saying that ACLS had been paid in full — and reassuring students via e-mail that the problem would be solved, according to e-mails provided to The Times by Johnson and several students.

Students had paid their fees in advance to WorldLink, some up to $18,000 for the entire year, which included housing. Sixteen arrived in Beijing just as the school shut down and never had a single class, Kim said.

"We are extremely sad of the circumstances of this crisis and a few students were evicted from their accommodation," Johnson wrote to The Seattle Times in early November. "But we been working all we can to find solutions since the wish of the students has been to remain in China."

In a mid-October e-mail to students, Joanna Zhou, head of the WorldLink office in Beijing, said Johnson told her he had sent the payment for the students' housing but indicated she suspected that wasn't true.

Zhou did not respond to several e-mails from The Times and stopped responding to students' e-mails after the first week.

Johnson repeatedly e-mailed students that WorldLink had paid ACLS the money for tuition and housing, and urged them to seek reimbursement from that host school. But at the same time, he blamed the H1N1 outbreak for a decline in enrollment, which he said resulted in a loss of revenue for WorldLink.

WorldLink's Web site has said since early December that the company has filed for bankruptcy, but no record of the filing can be found in federal bankruptcy courts. The Web site also says there are other students affected elsewhere in China, as well as in Japan and Korea.

Johnson at one point asked the Beijing students for their personal bank-account information, saying WorldLink could then transfer refunds to them individually. The students were skeptical, and asked instead that he send the requested $103,304 to an attorney liaison, who would then disperse it to the students.

Johnson never responded, said Yin-Man Lam, a professor at the University of Victoria who was among WorldLink's students.

When students warned they would take the case to authorities, Johnson replied, "There will be no winners if you are trying to carry this out with such a threat."

"If your goal is to get nothing, you should go ahead with handing in this complaint," he wrote.

He told the students the "legal and proper means" to handle the dispute was through the Better Business Bureau.

(The Seattle BBB has since issued this statement: "Due to multiple serious and unanswered complaints, BBB gives WorldLink Education an 'F' rating.")

Johnson at one point told the students he found an alternate school if they wanted to stay in Beijing, but that partnership never materialized. He also never proposed a feasible solution for reimbursing students' out-of-pocket expenses for housing, or refunding them for the missed classes, according to the students.

The Seattle headquarters has been closed since the onset of the conflict, and Johnson apparently moved to Sweden several months ago.

On Nov. 13, a complaint signed by 31 of the students was filed with the Economic Crime Investigation Department of the Chaoyang PSB (Public Security Bureau) in Beijing, the local government office that acts as a police station, Kim said. He said he was among a group of students who stayed at the bureau until about 1 a.m., answering questions and giving personal statements.

Three days later, police and members of the Commission of Education met the students at the ACLS campus and told them acriminal investigation had officially begun, Kim said.

He said he hasn't heard anything from police in the past several weeks. Investigators handling the case there couldn't be reached for comment by The Times.