Abstract: The education in pre- modern China has been seen limited to a small part o f the total population and thus can hardly have been regarded as an industry But the author of this article challenges this conventional wisdom .Taking the area of Huating- Lou ( the two Qing counties of Huating and Lou) as a case, the author has made an analysis o f the major types of school in this area and their functions, the size o f education ( the number of students and teachers in schools of different types), the investment in education, and the position of education as an industry in local economy .The author concludes that considering the number of individuals employed in education and its share in the total employment as w ell as the amount of investment and its share in total investment, education had become an important industry by the m id- nineteenth century.