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China Police Rescue Trafficked Children

As part of a national crackdown on child trafficking, police have rescued 23 children and made several arrests. From Reuters:

The Wuhan Rail Bureau in central China has also netted 18 suspects in an 8-day campaign targeting trains pulling in from the city of Kunming, the capital of impoverished Yunnan province in southeast China, the Xinhua news agency said.

Other children, ranging in age from 100 days to 8 years, from the poor, coal-mining province of Shanxi, have been found in Shandong province on the prosperous coast. They were taken hundreds of miles in buses by smuggling rings that used poor migrants to accompany the children.

Many are now in orphanages, since their parents have not been found, Central China Television said in a report on the campaign.

Chinese babies, especially boys, from poor and remote areas may be sold to more prosperous people in far-away provinces. Some older children are also sold to gangs who train them to beg in bigger, richer cities.
» Read more
- June 21, 2009 9:37 AM
Becoming a “Young Pioneer” is not an Easy Topic

China Elections and Governance translates an essay by a Chinese parent reflecting on their child’s entrance into the Young Pioneers:

“Today my son can be happy, he can finally wear the red scarf,” said one mother.

“Such a small child. Is it necessary for him to ‘resolve to contribute to the communist forces’? Does he know what communism is?” one father asked.

Another father replied: “Nowadays how many adults really understand communism? For that matter, how many officials truly understand what it is to ‘contribute to the communist forces’”?

“Such small children living with such big fakery!” declared the first father.

“Education is still so politicized and behind the times” said my friend, a young high school principal. His son is in another class, but for these words to come out of his mouth—I was quite surprised.
» Read more
- May 14, 2009 9:21 PM
Chinese Official Defends Construction of Schools Felled in Quake

Although ten months have passed since the tragic earthquake hit Sichuan Province, the many parents whose children were killed are still waiting for answers. A vice governor of Sichuan Province has declined to release the total figure of school children killed in the quake, and has blamed the quake itself and not faulty or corrupt construction for their deaths. From the New York Times:

Local and provincial officials have responded angrily to criticisms of school construction practices, and particularly to suggestions from some parents that there might have been corruption involved in the construction process for schools. The local authorities have silenced many parents who lost children in the earthquake, through a combination of compensation payments and intimidation.

A mother whose 11-year-old daughter died in the earthquake said by telephone on Sunday that “of course it was tofu construction that led to the collapse of the school.”

The mother, who requested anonymity because of continued government efforts to discourage public discussion of the collapse of the schools, said that she believed that the government must have a tally of schoolchildren who died in the earthquake, since communities in her area were well aware of death tolls at their local schools.

Read more about the earthquake and the controversy over collapsed schools via CDT.
» Read more
- March 8, 2009 6:57 PM
Slideshow: Road to School

A blogger “Flying Bird and Fish” posted a series of photos he took in a mountain area showing some rural children walking to school in a dangerous cliff road. He says that he was scared to see the scene. His hands were sweating and his legs were even trembling while taking photos of the children, via blog.sina.com.cn:

» Read more
- March 1, 2009 7:26 PM
China Wheelie Promo Video

Vimeo.com carries a short video by Rob Luxton documents his journey in China. His video introduction is as below:

Rob Luxton’s adventure on a three wheeled recumbent tricycle will take him 25,000km all around China, passing through every province on the mainland. The expedition will also help raise awareness and money for two Charities. Sowers Action and Care For Children . Both dedicated to improving the lives of children in poor areas throughout China. Beginning near Hong Kong the journey is estimated to last two and half years taking him from busy cities to remote mountain villages, deserts to great plains, deep lush valleys to the the scary heights of the Tibetan plateau and finally into the jungles of the South, before returning to Hong Kong in August 2009.

China Wheelie Promo Video from rob luxton on Vimeo.
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- February 28, 2009 9:57 AM
Documentary: The Life of Rural Chinese Children

This documentary tells about the life of left-behind children in rural China whose parents move to the cities in search of work. These children are taken care of by their grandparents, other relatives or by themselves. Some of them even have to take care of their younger brothers or sisters, via Youtube:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

See a slideshow of left-behind children in Qinnan, via fengniao.com:

See also CDT’s previous post As China Booms, Millions of Children Are Left Behind by Wall Street Journal and Slideshow: Migrants’ Children
» Read more
- February 16, 2009 12:28 PM
Sharp Rise In China Birth Defects

New statistics show an alarming rise in birth defects in China, apparently due to air pollution. From China Daily:

Every 30 seconds, a baby is born with physical defects in China, all thanks to the country’s degrading environment, an official of the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) has said.

“The number of newborns with birth defects is constantly increasing in both urban and rural areas,” Jiang Fan, vice-minister of the NPFPC said at a conference in Beijing recently. “And the rather alarming increase has forced us to kick off a high-level prevention plan.”

No details about the prevention plan were reported, except that it is being carried out in the eight most affected provinces. BBC reports:

The report said China’s coal-rich Shanxi province had the highest rate.

The commission blamed emissions from the region’s large chemical industry for the problems there.

Correspondents say the report suggests there is a human cost to China’s rapid economic development.

Researchers also blamed exposure to nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulates for the increase.
» Read more
- January 31, 2009 9:18 PM
Video Performance: 2009 Go China! (Updated)

Do you ever wonder how Chinese children are being educated in nationalism? The following video, which is spreading through Chinese cyberspace, will give you a clue. It shows a group of rural grade-school students performing a poetry reading. The lines are apparently written by adults, and refer to news events in 2008. No name of the school was mentioned in the original video post.

“This is truer than Zhang Yimou’s Opening Ceremony [of Beijing Olympics].” — a Chinese netizen’s comment on the performance, translated by CDT. Click here to read more netizens’ comments, translated by Bob Chen on Global Voices:

2009, GO CHINA!

Lead: Snowstorm, freely falling down to earth, like western values
Lead: Despair fills the sky, ice covers the earth

Lead: Did China retreat?
All: No. The Olympics were a success! We are victorious!
Lead: Hot blood and iron will of Chinese people, lighten up the dark world like burning the holy flame
All: The rivers and mountains, ever more colorful and beautiful

Lead: Earthquakes, shifting back and forth like the positions of Sarkozy, with his dirty tricks, trying to shake the great China
Lead: Did China retreat?
All: No. The Shenzhou-7 launched. We are victorious!
Lead: Pathetic Europe will never stop the insurmountable force of the Celestial Empire
All: Just the aftershocks from the earthquake would destroy France!

Lead: The happy flowers flourish in the oil fields on Tarim Basin
Lead: The suona [musical instrument] sings aloud in the Tawang district of the Himalayas
Lead: Historically accumulated resentment fill the Ryukyu Trench
All: Smiles in Sun Moon Lake became a miraculous flower in the Pacific Ocean**

Lead: “Do not sway, Do not slacken off and Do not flip flop”***
Lead: “Do not change the flag, Do not change the label, Do not turn back”****
All: Step ruthlessly over all anti-China forces

Lead: The giant ship full of patches, raise up the brand new sail
All: Spirits are high, crash through the waves, the wind is at our back
Lead: 2009
All: Go China
Lead: 2009
All: China the Greatest

* Read also In Short: How Chinese Nationalism is different from the justrecently’s beautiful blog.

** Tarim Basin is located in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where ethnic conflicts have broken out between members of the Uighur minority and the Han majority and some groups advocate independence from the PRC. Tawang district is an area in the Himalayas whose ownership has been under dispute by China and India; Ryukyu Trench is an ocean area whose ownership is under dispute by Japan and China; Sun-moon Lake is in Taiwan

*** & **** Words from President Hu Jintao’s speech during a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of economic reform at The Great Hall of the People on December 18, 2008 in Beijing, China; translated by Dr. David Kelly, China Research Centre; University of Technology Sydney.

UPDATES:

From the Global Voices blog:

Right at the time that the internet is in search of the teacher/organizer and debating on the recitation, unexpectedly, the man showed up voluntarily, and not in anywhere else but right in Bullog.cn, a turf that is well known for its intimacy to liberalism and pro-democracy thoughts, and where the work is under the most relentless attack.

The organizer, named 左左右右（left-left-right-right), explained how the story happened:

快期末了，我发现孩子们提前好几天都在忙着过圣诞，还有专人组织捐款买东西，国庆节也没这么上心啊，于是我问孩子们对圣诞节有何理解。他们摇摇头

“It is approaching the final week of school year, and I found the kids busy with Christmas preparation, and someone organizing a donation for decoration. They were even more excited than in National Day. So I asked how much they knew aboutChristmas. They shook heads.”

我问几个学习非常努力的孩子理想是什么，他说，好好学习，将来考上好的大学，最好能去留学，我问留学什么好，他说，外国的学校就是好。好在哪里呢，他说不上来。

“I asked some very diligent kids what their dreams are, and they told that to study hard and go abroad for university in the future. I asked why. They told the foreign education is just better, but told no reason.
……”

但是，是谁教给他们不分来由的崇洋媚外呢呢，对外国不加思索的盲目崇拜，从物质到言论难道对西方没有一点质疑？

“But, who teach them such an indiscriminate favor of all the foreign stuff, and the admiration without a deeper thought? Don’t they even have a grain of doubt towards all the western world, from its material to ideas?”

哪些事情让你最难忘？他们答：雪灾、地震，圣火传递，奥运成功，金融危机。在值得中国人骄傲的圣火传递和奥运举行期间，也充满了刁难，2008年何止一个郁闷可以形容的！然后就想开一个主题班会，做一个视频给即将离去的2008做纪念

“（I asked) what impressed you the most in the past year? They said: “The snowstorm in January, Si-chuan Earthquake, torch relay, the success of Olympics and financial crisis. ” In the most pride-worthy torch relay and Olympics, turbulence and harassment against China has never stopped. How gloomy was 2008! So I came up with an idea to hold class meeting and make a video to memorize the past 2008.”

Then, in an open letter, he apologized to all those being “thundered”, and all the French people angered.

He insists that it is for not a single bit of education of hatred.

写这首“诗”的初衷是回顾2008年的历史，并没有宣扬对西方的仇恨，也不是宣扬暴力，更没有针对普通群众，一切以作者本人解释为准。在大家认为仇视西方民众的地方是在警告外国：2009年，不要再以任何借口挑衅中国！历史问题我们也一直记在心里！

My initial will to write the “poem” is to review the 2008, instead of a propaganda of hatred against the western, without any call for violence, and not directed to any civilians. Only my explanation is the standard interpretation. In points that many people think that show hatred to the western is actually a warning to them: in 2009, don’t provoke China by any excuse! We have always kept the historical issues in mind!

—–

《2009，中国加油》
甲：大雪，像西方的价值观，自由的飘洒，
乙：漫天哀愁，一地冰碴 !

甲：中国退缩了吗？
全：没有！奥运成功了！我们胜利啦！
甲：炎黄坚毅的热血，如炽烈的圣火，燃烧灰暗的世界，
全：万里江山，又嵌上五彩的画夹！

甲：地震，像萨科奇的立场，用猥琐的伎俩，摇晃着巍巍中华。
甲：中国退缩了吗？
全：没有！神七飞天了！我们胜利啦！
甲：瘦瘦的欧罗巴，挡不住天朝的金戈铁马，
全：地震的余波也能把法兰西催垮！

甲：塔里木的石油盛开幸福之花，
乙：达旺的唢呐奏响在喜马拉雅。
甲：中山世土的积怨填平了琉球海沟，
全：日月潭的微笑成为太平洋的奇葩！

甲：不动摇、不懈怠、不折腾
乙：不改旗、不易帜、不回头
全：将反华者狠狠的踏在脚下

甲：打满补丁的大船，挂上崭新的桅帆
全：乘风破浪，意气风发！
甲：2009
全：中国加油
甲：2009
全：中国最大
» Read more
- December 31, 2008 12:14 PM
A Beijing Petitioning Adventure of 40 Parents Who Lost Children

The following is an account of the heart-wrenching experience shared by 40 parents of missing children. After the Olympics and Paralympics had finished, they went to Beijing to petition for help to find their children. Written by one of the parents and translated by CDT via a blog post.

While the story is being spread quickly over the Net, it is also being censored by bloghosts and BBS sites with equal rapidity.

Over recent years, there have been countless cases of child smuggling across the country. We’ve been traveling all over the country looking for our children, selling our properties and belongings, and raking up huge amounts of debt in the process. Among the family members and relatives of these lost children, some have died, some have become mentally ill, some have fallen sick, and most have at least been psychologically exhausted.

Of course some of these cases could have been solved in a timely manner, but due to all kinds of human factors (I won’t elaborate here because of my concerns with the public security bureau), they only establish a case 24 hours after a child is reported missing. I think this facilitates the smugglers in that it gives them more time to transport the children away from the vicinities within that 24 hours. We reported these cases all the way up the government chain, but months passed without a single result. Some families gave up.

I posted bills across towns, on TVs and in newspapers and met with a lot of parents who shared the same fate online. I also learned that a Henan family sent a letter about their 8-month-old missing child through some channel to the premier Wen Jiabao. He made a note of this and within eight days, public security broke the case. With this last ray of hope, we decided to go together to Beijing in order to let the premier know about our pain. And in order to not affect the state image, we decided to travel to Beijing after the Olympics, and chose September 22.

On September 22, we checked into a cheap hostel and stayed mostly in the basement rooms with some really poor parents choosing to camp out at the train station. More than 40 of us, from 10 different provinces, went all the way to the Bird’s Nest the next morning and put up our posters and banners detailing our experiences. A college student learned about our cases and offered to help us with our petitioning. The scene also attracted an American reporter, but we refused to be interviewed as we feared bringing embarrassment to the government. Furthermore, we figured that CCTV, China’s premier media outlet, would be a better choice for our complaints.

With the guidance of the college student volunteer, we made our journey to the CCTV building, but soon realized that we were being trailed by who I guess were three state security agents, probably worried that we might be activists of some sort. At the entrance of CCTV, we were greeted by an armed policeman who asked us what our business was, which we told him. He said he would need to report to his boss but suggested that such a case would not fit with the “harmonious society” slogan. We understood this as meaning that we would have no chance to make our voice heard there. Then, one by one we unfurled our posters at the entrance. This prompted the guards to call the police. Three police cars soon arrived and started questioning us about the purpose of our trip. The college student asked all of us to return to the hostel, and offered to stay behind and deal with the police. Later we called and learned that he was released from the police station only after his school official made a trip to pick him up from the authorities.

We returned to the hostel but later decided to send three representatives to CCTV again to see whether we could get onto a program on the air. An old man told us diplomatically that the chances were very slim. We then made a trip to Wangfujing, where we ran into ABC and another foreign TV crew. Now without hope for domestic media coverage, we decided that we needed to talk to foreigners. However, these interviews weren’t so smooth either. The hostel owner got word from the police that we were talking to the foreign media and, under pressure, wouldn’t allow interviews on his premises. The police claimed that the hostel owner organized the interviews. Angered, the parents rushed out of the hostel to find another place to talk to the foreign media. After that, the police made a compromise that allowed that the interviews could be done there. All those who were at the interviews, reporters included, shed tears while hearing our stories.

On September 24, we left the hostel very early in the morning to go to the National Center for Petitions. Right upon leaving the hostel, a police car started following us. When we made our way to the Xidan area, eight more cars appeared with 80 policemen. They stopped us and asked for our IDs. A father lost his emotions and said that he was looking for his child. Right as he was about to get out his child’s photo from his backpack, a dozen or so policemen violently gripped his neck and grabbed his hair. The other parents were stunned. I went up to argue with the police but was soon myself snatched by the hair and dragged into a car. “You dare question the government?!” exclaimed one of the cops. At the detention center, our IDs were taken away and when I tried to snap a few photos of our cell, four policemen took my camera away and deleted all the photos on it. “We are the lords here,” one said.

In the afternoon, we were taken by two prisoner vans to a petition center of the Ministry of Public Security. All 40 parents were asked to attend a meeting and forced to write down a case on paper. After writing the materials, we were put on a coach bus and with the escort of four police cars, taken to somewhere in the suburbs.

The bus drove for half an hour and finally arrived at a petitioners reception center; we had no idea what we were here for. We were brought into a huge iron-clad hall with many guards, then went through security checks and had our cameras taken away. They yelled at us and told us to go to different rooms according to province. There were thousands of petitioners there — I think senior leaders wouldn’t need to go to the actual localities to learn about real life there; just making a trip here would do. I am from Hubei but I lost my child in Shenzhen so I went into the room of Guangdong, a cell with a small window for ventilation. I asked an old man, a 40-year-old petitioning veteran, why he was there. He said he had been asking for a redress for his treatment during the Cultural Revolution. There were screamings constantly in the rooms and local government attachés would regularly drag their “constituents” away from the center and deport them back home. I witnessed a 70-year-old lady get forcefully dragged away. I also heard that the guy who killed an American and then jumped off a building was also a petitioner. He had a case long unresolved and had resorted to extreme actions.

Four hours later, my “government” took me away and put me under 3-day house arrest at their gueshouse in Beijing. My ID was taken away again, and I was put under watch for 24 hours. I was also asked to write a commitment to ceast and desist petitioning. The director of the government attaché office in Beijing bought me a ticket to Shenzhen and saw me off at the train station.

Beijing used to be the seat of the emperor. We learned a big lesson from this trip. It’s fair to say that Beijing cops are the busiest in the country, and that their cars are seen everywhere. I never imagined that Beijing cops, who were always described on TV as civilized law enforcement, would treat parents of missing children with fists and kicks. I don’t understand how they could beat people like us, and I wonder what they would think if they had their own children missing. All of us parents are in great despair. We came to Beijing with hope but learned that it isn’t a place where one can reason. Where is such a place, then? Heaven?

» Read more
- October 2, 2008 1:59 AM
Thousands Of NKorea Children Face Hardship In China: Activists

From AFP:

A newly formed rights group said Tuesday it would launch a campaign to help thousands of North Korean children forced into begging or prostitution in northeast China.

The Seoul-based North Korean Human Rights Campaign Organising Committee said it was concerned about orphan refugees and about “stateless” children born to North Korean refugee women and Chinese men.

The number of orphans who have fled food shortages and other hardships and crossed into China is now about 2,000, according to committee estimates based on surveys by non-governmental organisations.
» Read more
- September 2, 2008 6:01 PM
The Interview With “Do Nothing Yang”

The EastSouthNorthWest Blog has published an English translation of the first media interview (Chinese) with Yang Jinggui:

In Wudian Middle School, Changfeng county, Anhui province, two students fought in a classroom but the teacher did nothing to stop them. Afterwards, one student lapsed into unconsciousness and then died. This incident was exposed in the media and drew a great deal of attention. The teacher Yang Jinggui was labeled by netizens as “Do Nothing Yang” and became just as hot on the Internet as the teacher nicknamed Runner Fan. Yang has been transferred away from the school and also agreed to pay 100,000 RMB in compensation to the family of the deceased. He also received a major demerit. The Wudian Middle School principal Fang Qifu was also relieved of his post and given a major demerit.

The following is the first media interview of Yang Jinggui, as conducted by Henan Commercial News.

CDT’s previous coverage of “Runner Fan” can be seen here.
» Read more
- July 18, 2008 12:51 PM
On Children’s Day, China Remembers Quake’s Young Victims

“Parents mourn their offspring, and youngsters nationwide help raise funds to aid survivors.” Ching-Ching Ni reports in the LA Times:

Marking a sad International Children’s Day, angry parents mourned their young offspring today and children across China opened their piggy banks and held yard sales to help survivors of last month’s devastating earthquake.

Some of the most enduring images from the magnitude 7.9 temblor that killed about 69,000 were the faces of China’s young. An estimated 7,000 children lost their lives and more than 16,000 were injured, most buried alive when their schools collapsed.

Parents in Juyuan Middle School, where 900 children died, mourned the youngsters today near the ruins and demanded that a “blood debt” be paid by people responsible for overseeing shoddy construction.

The central government has vowed to investigate building quality and set new standards for future schoolhouses. With entire cities and villages wiped out and millions of survivors left homeless, many youngsters have had to resume classes in makeshift tents and temporary shelters. Some have been flown to neighboring provinces, where they will live apart from their parents so they could attend school.

A netizen with the online name yusheng 0717 (雨声0717) wrote the following post on Tianya.com, translated by CDT:

Late last night, I happened to watch Hunan Satellite TV, a specially made program for Children’s Day… Several children [earthquake survivors) sat around with adults [TV hosts and guests].

When asked what they want to do when they grow up, an older boy said, “I want to be a doctor.”
“Why?” the hostess asked.
“Because I want to save many people.”

Another younger girl who had a swollen face said, “I want to go to university. I want to make lots of money for my parents.”

Everyone nodded.

Then a little boy who had a cast on his foot thought for a while, then muttered “I want to be a architect. I want to build solid buildings.”

According to the hostess, the little boy was one of four survivors from his class, which had more then 30 children.
» Read more
- June 1, 2008 7:00 PM
China’s Only Children Face Great Expectations

From NPR’ All Things Considered:

Since 1980, China has had a one-child policy. If you have a second kid, you pay a stiff fine — unless you’re a member of a national minority, or you and your spouse are both only children, or there’s some other exception.

The result is that traditionally large families have turned into inverted pyramids, with multiple grandparents for every treasured little one. They lavish the child with attention — and expect great things.

The weekend before the May 12 earthquake, Robert Siegel met with one such only child as part of NPR’s effort to get a sense of everyday life in the rapidly growing city of Chengdu. Luo Meng is an effervescent, 17-year-old high school junior who goes by the English name Becky at her public boarding school. More casually, she uses a translation of one character of her Chinese name: Bamboo.
» Read more
- May 24, 2008 11:13 PM
Suffer, the Children

From Newsweek.com:

Of all the wrenching images emerging from China’s devastating earthquake, those of the hundreds of children crushed in their schools are probably the most poignant. But as grieving parents mourned their children, aid workers were rushing to help another vulnerable group: those left orphaned by the disaster. Chinese authorities announced Thursday that 4,000 children lost their parents on May 12—a terrible toll in a disaster where the number of official deaths now tops 50,000.

Care for Children, a private organization that runs more than 180 orphanages in over 30 provinces as well as assisting state facilities, is one of the groups trying to help the youngest victims. NEWSWEEK’s Manuela Zoninsein spoke to Robert Glover, executive director of the Beijing-based group, about what he found during his recent visit to the quake-hit Chengdu area.
» Read more
- May 23, 2008 8:44 AM
China’s Child Obesity Problem ‘Ballooning’

From AFP:

Child obesity is ballooning into a big problem in China as ‘little emperors’ are increasingly getting an appetite for the Western couch-potato way of life, according to a study presented in Geneva.

Almost one in five children under seven is overweight and more than seven percent are obese, according to a study of the Chinese National Task Force on Childhood Obesity, presented at the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Health Organisation.

“These numbers are higher than in European countries, while the gross domestic product in China is much lower,” said Ding Zongyi, who led the study.
» Read more
- May 21, 2008 9:04 PM