Deng Jifei, a 12-year-old boy, hugs his father with tears at the father's working place in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on February 2. The boy, who is left behind at home in Xixiang County in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, had not seen his father for more than one year (XINHUA)

After spending a mere eight days at home during this year's Spring Festival, Sun Haiping and Xiang Xue, a couple in their late 20s, set off without their 7-year-old daughter. They chose to leave their hometown during the early hours of the morning as their little girl, Sun Zhiyan, was still in sleep.

"It's hard for us to see Zhiyan cry," Xiang, the mother, told Beijing Review . She could not bear to dwell on the scene last year when they left their daughter to go to work in Shenzhen, in south China's Guangdong Province. "We had no other option because we have to earn a living," Xiang said.

Zhiyan lives in a mountainous village in Shimen County with her grandparents in central China's Hunan Province. The family has been facing this situation for the past five years.

In fact, children like Zhiyan are so common in China that they have been branded as "left-behind" children, of which numerous cases occur in the country's rural areas.

According to a report by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) in 2014, China had an estimated 61.03 million children who had been left behind by their parents when they were employed as migrant workers in cities far from their children. Among the children, about 15 percent were reported as having no physical contact with their parents during the course of a calendar year.

Lacking proper care, many of these children suffer from anxiety, accidents and even sexual assaults. Some can even become involved in anti-social behavior or commit crimes.

In June last year, four siblings left behind in Bijie County, southwest China's Guizhou Province, committed suicide at home by drinking pesticide. According to reports, their parents had divorced and the father was working in south China's Hainan Province at the time. There was no other relative to take care of them, therefore leaving the responsibility in the hands of the eldest child, who was just 13 years old.

Additionally, in October last year, a female teacher was killed by three 13-year-old left-behind children in Shaodong County in Hunan Province.

"Left-behind children pose a social problem with historic, systematic and cultural roots. It cannot be solved by a single organization or group but needs joint efforts from the government, society and ordinary citizens," said Chen Ailian, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) and President of the Zhejiang-based Wanfeng Auto Holding Group. She proposed to establish a law designed to assist left-behind children during this year's NPC meeting.

In his work report for this year, Premier Li Keqiang called on families, schools, governments and society to jointly take the responsibility of protecting and educating the country's younger generations, including children who have been left behind at home by their parents.

Meng Ailin, the mother who is working in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, and her daughter, who is left behind at home in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (XINHUA)

Defining responsibilities 

On February 14, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a guideline on the protection of left-behind children, vowing to greatly reduce their numbers in rural areas by 2020.

The guideline defined the various responsibilities of parents, government and society. It also stressed that parents should bear the primary responsibility in the care of their offspring.

"Some irresponsible parents give birth to children, but leave them uncared for, seriously harming their physical and mental health," said Zou Ming, Vice Minister of Civil Affairs, during a State Council Information Office media briefing on February 19.

Tong Lihua, Director of Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, said that the parents have no right to shirk their responsibility as primary caretakers for their children. "The absence of parents' role in these children's lives has led to many problems, including crimes committed by those children," she said.

"Such parents should be punished by law for their indifference," Tong added.

The concept is included in the new guideline, which states that migrant worker parents who leave children behind without giving them regular attention or adequate care might face punishment.

"Their right to custody of their children might be revoked according to the guideline," Zou warned.

Long Donglin, former President of the Kunming Municipal Academy of Social Sciences in southwest China's Yunnan Province, said that local governments should actively investigate and identify parents who do not fulfill their responsibility as guardians and issue warnings or revoke their guardianship.

"Local governments need to establish a sound working system to do the job," Long said.

The guideline proposed three methods to solve the problem. The first involved parents taking their children with them when they seek employment in other cities. The second suggested that at least one parent stays to take care of their progeny. The last method involved consigning the guardianship to adult relatives who are able to take on the responsibility. The guideline explicitly forbids leaving children under the age of 16 alone without guardians.

However, many parents have expressed their concerns regarding the options provided. Zhiyan's mother Xiang said that she and her husband have also considered taking their daughter to Shenzhen with them, but their current living standards in the city have forbidden it.

"We live in a dormitory-like room in Shenzhen and we have no spare time or enough money to support our daughter in the city," she said sadly.

Zhang Xudong, a researcher with the Beijing-based China Youth and Children Research Center, suggested alleviating the difficulties that migrant children face in cities.

"Only when such obstacles such as hukou  restrictions are removed will migrant children be able to enjoy the same rights with local children in education and other social services," Zhang said. Hukou , or permanent residential permit, ties subsidized social services including health, housing, education or pensions to one's legal residence and is much coveted in large cities.

Wang Dinghua, Director of the Primary Education Division of the Ministry of Education, said during the February 19 media briefing that the ministry will introduce more measures to ensure that migrant children can receive schooling close to their parents' workplace.

Meanwhile, Zhang also suggested that governments in rural areas make more efforts to develop local industries in order to attract those migrant workers back to their hometown. "This way, those migrant parents can reunite with their children," he said.

Gu Xinru, a 9-year-old left-behind girl, does her homework with her grandmother (right) at Maotang Village in Huaiyuan County, Anhui Province, on August 4, 2015 (XINHUA)

Besides the responsibility of the parents, the new guideline also delineates the role of the government and society in caring for the country's left-behind children.

Local governments and village committees must keep themselves well-informed about the situation of left-behind children within their jurisdiction and ensure that they are properly taken care of, the guideline stated.

Education authorities and schools also have an obligation to help them get education in a safe environment.

Local governments can contract charities and voluntary bodies to provide professional services, and a system of reporting, intervention, assessment and help will be established, the guideline said.

Following the guideline, the Ministry of Civil Affairs inaugurated a new office devoted to protecting left-behind children. The office, under the ministry's Department of Social Affairs, plans to assess and improve the management of databases for left-behind children in rural areas, according to a ministry statement. It will also be responsible for establishing an inter-ministerial joint conference system to coordinate work among different government branches and helping to integrate civil affairs resources, including social assistance, welfare, social groups and communities.

Even so, many insiders participating in efforts to help those children say that there is still a long way to go.

Li Yang, a co-founder of Prop Roots, a public service organization dedicated to helping left-behind children, said that there are few channels for social organizations to take part in the activity due to a lack of government financial support.

"For example, we are confident that we have the capability to train more professional teachers for rural schools, but the reality is that a lack in funding has led to a brain drain of our original talents," Li said. He suggested that local governments should fund services of social organizations such as his to solve the predicament.

Long suggested that the government should encourage local enterprises to participate in the action. "Local governments can use tax-reduction policies to encourage those enterprises to provide childcare services," he said.

Tong Xiaojun, Director of the Children's Research Institute at China Youth University of Political Studies, said that China should train more social workers to help protect and educate left-behind children. "Compared to a developed country, China's social worker force is still in its infancy. In the future, the government should put more efforts to train more professional social workers, especially those in rural areas, to help solve problems including those posed by left-behind children," Tong said.

Yang Zhanyi, a 10-year-old left-behind boy who lives with his grandparents in Dongsheng Village of Longsheng County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, helps prepare supper for his family on May 5, 2015 (XINHUA)

A legal way 

Even though legal experts praised the release of the guideline, they also urged that more actions be taken to improve China's laws related to the issue, specifically the protection of children's rights.

Tong, with the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, called for the improvement of parents' legal awareness of their responsibilities as guardians.

"According to the ACWF's figures, more than 2.05 million left-behind children in China live alone without guardians. That indicates a lack of legal awareness," Tong said. She suggested that the legal system be improved to punish the indifferent parents.

Another investigation by the ACWF showed that 77 percent of the country's left-behind children have been assaulted. Legal experts have called for the setting up of a sound protection net for children who have been neglected consisting of guardians, schools, society and laws.

However, Bi Cheng, Dean of the School of Public Security of Xi'an's Northwest University of Politics and Law, said that China's current laws are irrelevant in their attempts to protect the rights of left-behind children.

"Most of the current laws concerning juveniles lack the power of enforcement and restriction, which has led to weak prosecutions in their implementation process," Bi told Gongyi Bao, a Beijing-based newspaper affiliated with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

For example, the Law on the Protection of Minors and the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency are regarded by legal experts as "toothless."

"The two laws are just principles. There are no specific rules in the laws defining responsibilities and punishment conditions. Such laws cannot be fully implemented in reality," said Wang Shun'an, Director of the Institute of Criminology with China University of Political Science and Law.

Wang suggested the creation of a child welfare law to cover the rights of minors, especially those left behind.

Gao Weijian, a professor with Chongqing-based Southwest University of Political Science and Law, agreed. He said that the laws concerning juveniles can be separated into three tiers.

The laws in the first tier are hind-sighted ones. They are set up to resolve problems that have occurred, such as some countries' laws on the protection of juveniles. The second-tier laws are those designed to protect and assist children on the brink of danger, like China's Law on the Protection of Minors. The third-tier laws focused on prevention, such as the Child Welfare Law.

"First of all, we found that the crimes committed by juveniles are a noticeable part of the nation's social problems. Then, through investigation and research, we proposed the concept of 'protection' to counter these problems. But through further research, we found that 'protection' was not enough and that the problem may lie in the environment that the children grow up in, so we must push the legal concept to the level of children's welfare," Gao said. He added that the creation of a child welfare law is only a matter of time.

Copyedited by Bryan Michael Galvan 

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