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Economic growth fueled by apathy to plight of left-behind children
By Wan Lixin |
January 23, 2013, Wednesday
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WHAT'S the typical image of a nine-year-old kid?
My son is nine. Thanks to three years of intensive indoctrination, his progress in Chinese literacy is admirable, but otherwise he's not too different from a three-year-old.
He still cuddles his qiaohu (tiger doll) while asleep, wonders aloud why the tiger can stay at home while he has to rough it at school, and murmurs goodbye to the tiger when he plods off to school.
When my wife and I are not around, his grandmother doesn't hesitate to spoon-feed him some extra food "good for his health," and at his grandparents' home his pet argument is: Why do I have to consume so much meat, while that scalywag of a sister (a six-year-old cousin) can get away with so little?
Here is the image of another nine-year-old, Li Azuo, a girl in the rural Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. ("A nine-year-old shoulders the family burden," January 14, Wenhui Daily)
Her parents began to work as migrant workers four years ago, and since then she has been taking care of her seven-year-old brother and her elder brother by doing all kinds of household chores: cooking, doing laundry, feeding the pigs, chicken and ducks. That means the girl has to get up at five in the morning.
She cannot remember the last time she talked with her parents. The reporters tried several times to contact her parents, in vain, for the phones were always "power off." The parents, with an indifferent education, make about 5,000 yuan (US$803) a year, and are anxious to see their children grow up so that they too can earn money as migrant workers.
In Guangxi alone, the number of left-behind children totals 1.4 million, accounting for about 22.5 percent of the total, and the percentage is increasing.They are technically orphans of the global factory, but they do not generally get the attention sometimes given to orphans.
Recently a fire at a privately run orphanage in Lankao, Henan Province in central China, claimed seven young lives. For any educated Chinese, Lankao would immediately conjure up the image of Jiao Yulu (1922-1964), who had become a symbol of a dedicated Party cadre who would sacrifice everything - including life - in the service of the people. He was Party secretary of Lankao County.
According to reports, the poverty-stricken county spent 20 million yuan on an edifice for its finance bureau, while the care of orphans was left to Yuan Lihai, a 48-year-old woman. Yuan has cared for more than 100 children since 1987.
In the wake of the tragedy, the local government took the proactive action of pronouncing the orphanage "unlicensed" and putting Yuan in a hotel room for questioning. When this was not enough, some grassroots officials were stripped of their office to appease public ire.
In Jieyang, Guangdong Province, a building opened nominally as an orphanage in 1995 had been used for more remunerative funereal and rehabilitative services. In a failed ruse to cope with inspections following the Henan orphanage fire tragedy, the local government tried to borrow some orphans from a temple.
As the victims are true orphans, at least we know who to blame. We are less sure in the case of the above-mentioned nine-year-old girl, an orphan in all but name. We are tempted to blame her parents. But they are among crucial contributors to the success of the Chinese economic take-off so glorified globally.
The plight of these honest workers serves to explain the sustainability of growth: the steadily marginalized migrant parents tend to give birth to more children, and their children, growing up in the absence of parental care, usually face diminishing prospects, which makes them more than willing to market themselves as labor when the time ripens.
Early this month the Ministry of Education and several other ministries jointly called for preferential treatment for left-behind children in terms of better nutrition, schooling and transport to school. That's all. But children depend on their parents for more than material things. Children, more than adults, do not subsist on a nutritious lunch alone.
To be growing up without the immediate care of their parents means that they are easy targets of computer game providers. Many providers are registering explosive growth after launching crusades in the countryside.
The weakening of the family ties also tells on the parents. Separation from their children, and probably from each other, plus the harsh demands of the assembly line and the anonymity of urban existence, cause couples to split up.
The fragility of family life worsens the plight of left-behind children. The welfare of the children can be too easily sacrificed to the ideology of the market.
Officials and academics can talk smugly of the distinctly Chinese mode of growth, because they can conveniently pretend not be acquainted with the inconvenient truth. Soaring growth affords us myriad palliatives, kudos, and extenuating circumstances. We will become more sensitive when these children, grown up, begin to make an impact on the national consciousness, nilly-willy.
My son is nine. Thanks to three years of intensive indoctrination, his progress in Chinese literacy is admirable, but otherwise he's not too different from a three-year-old.
He still cuddles his qiaohu (tiger doll) while asleep, wonders aloud why the tiger can stay at home while he has to rough it at school, and murmurs goodbye to the tiger when he plods off to school.
When my wife and I are not around, his grandmother doesn't hesitate to spoon-feed him some extra food "good for his health," and at his grandparents' home his pet argument is: Why do I have to consume so much meat, while that scalywag of a sister (a six-year-old cousin) can get away with so little?
Here is the image of another nine-year-old, Li Azuo, a girl in the rural Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. ("A nine-year-old shoulders the family burden," January 14, Wenhui Daily)
Her parents began to work as migrant workers four years ago, and since then she has been taking care of her seven-year-old brother and her elder brother by doing all kinds of household chores: cooking, doing laundry, feeding the pigs, chicken and ducks. That means the girl has to get up at five in the morning.
She cannot remember the last time she talked with her parents. The reporters tried several times to contact her parents, in vain, for the phones were always "power off." The parents, with an indifferent education, make about 5,000 yuan (US$803) a year, and are anxious to see their children grow up so that they too can earn money as migrant workers.
In Guangxi alone, the number of left-behind children totals 1.4 million, accounting for about 22.5 percent of the total, and the percentage is increasing.They are technically orphans of the global factory, but they do not generally get the attention sometimes given to orphans.
Recently a fire at a privately run orphanage in Lankao, Henan Province in central China, claimed seven young lives. For any educated Chinese, Lankao would immediately conjure up the image of Jiao Yulu (1922-1964), who had become a symbol of a dedicated Party cadre who would sacrifice everything - including life - in the service of the people. He was Party secretary of Lankao County.
According to reports, the poverty-stricken county spent 20 million yuan on an edifice for its finance bureau, while the care of orphans was left to Yuan Lihai, a 48-year-old woman. Yuan has cared for more than 100 children since 1987.
In the wake of the tragedy, the local government took the proactive action of pronouncing the orphanage "unlicensed" and putting Yuan in a hotel room for questioning. When this was not enough, some grassroots officials were stripped of their office to appease public ire.
In Jieyang, Guangdong Province, a building opened nominally as an orphanage in 1995 had been used for more remunerative funereal and rehabilitative services. In a failed ruse to cope with inspections following the Henan orphanage fire tragedy, the local government tried to borrow some orphans from a temple.
As the victims are true orphans, at least we know who to blame. We are less sure in the case of the above-mentioned nine-year-old girl, an orphan in all but name. We are tempted to blame her parents. But they are among crucial contributors to the success of the Chinese economic take-off so glorified globally.
The plight of these honest workers serves to explain the sustainability of growth: the steadily marginalized migrant parents tend to give birth to more children, and their children, growing up in the absence of parental care, usually face diminishing prospects, which makes them more than willing to market themselves as labor when the time ripens.
Early this month the Ministry of Education and several other ministries jointly called for preferential treatment for left-behind children in terms of better nutrition, schooling and transport to school. That's all. But children depend on their parents for more than material things. Children, more than adults, do not subsist on a nutritious lunch alone.
To be growing up without the immediate care of their parents means that they are easy targets of computer game providers. Many providers are registering explosive growth after launching crusades in the countryside.
The weakening of the family ties also tells on the parents. Separation from their children, and probably from each other, plus the harsh demands of the assembly line and the anonymity of urban existence, cause couples to split up.
The fragility of family life worsens the plight of left-behind children. The welfare of the children can be too easily sacrificed to the ideology of the market.
Officials and academics can talk smugly of the distinctly Chinese mode of growth, because they can conveniently pretend not be acquainted with the inconvenient truth. Soaring growth affords us myriad palliatives, kudos, and extenuating circumstances. We will become more sensitive when these children, grown up, begin to make an impact on the national consciousness, nilly-willy.
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