CHILDREN who have to grow up without their parents and parental guidance naturally command our compassion.

And when such absentee parenting and child rearing becomes more like a norm than an exception in parts of rural China, then this state of affairs should also command our fears.

Having known little parental affection and values-teaching, some become dangerous when they feel they have no limits and become aware of their own power for unchecked action, some of it violent.

Blogger Hong Qiaojun wrote recently that a migrant couple he knows asked him to buy two train tickets for them so they could rush back home.

Hong was puzzled, because the couple had just returned to the city after spending the Spring Festival at their home village.

The couple explained that their ne'er-do-well son back home had assaulted his grandmother after failing to get gambling money from her. The woman was hospitalized.

There are reports of similar assaults, some of them fatal.

The Guangzhou-based New Express Daily reported on January 31 of a tragic incident in a village in Guangzhou where a 15-year-old girl strangled her grandmother to death after failing to get money from her.

The young culprit then set the home on fire, trying to cover up the scene.

The girl had been brought up by the grandmother, her parents being divorced long ago.

A similar case occurred on October 9 in Leshan, Sichuan Province, where a 15-year-old boy killed both his grandparents so that he could make money by selling a dozen rabbits raised by the couple.

His migrant worker parents had left home when he was 4, leaving him in the custody of a relative.

It is hard to imagine such cruelty from children of a supposedly tender age normally associated with innocence, mirth and health.

Normal child development usually involves the presence of two loving parents, ideally an affectionate mother and an exacting father who together minister to the child's physical, mental and spiritual welfare.

Growing up without the benefit of reasonable reproaches, remonstrances, and rebukes, children easily grow up seeing themselves at the center of their universe and can easily become selfish, obdurate or cruel.

Sadly, tens of millions of rural children are now forced to essentially manage their childhood, adolescence and attendant problems on their own.

Due to a phenomenon vaguely described as "urbanization," a large number of villagers in their prime flock to cities in search of employment, leaving children, spouses or parents to somehow fend for themselves.

Their cheap labor and dedication are largely responsible for the "China miracle."

The number of left-behind children is not known. One estimate puts it at 20 million. A survey by the All-China Women's Federation estimated in 2005 there were 58 million, more than 40 million children under the age of 14.

China's lunar orbiter had just beamed back comprehensive lunar images that are believed to be the finest so far ("China has moon fully covered," February 7, Shanghai Daily).

Clearly, there is greater urgency to survey China's rural landscape.

In northern Jiangsu Province, which is relatively underdeveloped, left-behind children are said to account for 30 to 60 percent of all students in primary and middle schools.

"Living widows"

Many of these children have academic problems; some are prone to bullying and some are retiring, feeling insecure and timorous.

Some of them are forced to assume responsibilities far too heavy for their young shoulders.

Last October, many were shocked by an online photo showing a young girl primary school pupil sitting at a desk and holding her sleeping baby brother. The scene of one left-behind child tending another was taken in Fenghuang County, Hunan Province, but it sums up a nationwide problem.

Children are just part of the sacrifice.

Following a two-year investigation, a team headed by Professor Ye Jingzhong from China Agricultural University concluded in December 2008 that nationally there are 47 million left-behind wives.

Another official survey finds that two-thirds of Chinese peasant wives live apart from their husbands. Many of these women - virtual single mothers - have to juggle the tasks of farming and rearing their children, single-handedly.

Long separation from their spouses take a toll on their psychological well-being. Some feel abandoned and overwhelmed. Some are understandably angry. This study found that 42 percent of the women surveyed often wept in distress.

These figures translate into gruesome real-life pictures of the rural landscape.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University, during a trip to rural Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in August 2006, reportedly saw desolation usually associated with wartime: whole villages peopled by the elderly, women, and children, and such were their economic circumstances that some families had lost contact with the men working outside.

Zhu Dongmei, a left-behind woman in Henan Province, wrote a folk rhyme depicting the plight of left-behind wives; it won a competition sponsored by local Beijing media in 2010.

"Of 10 bridal homes, nine are deserted," she wrote. "And when bridegrooms go to cities, brides must fend for themselves."

Zhu married when she was 22, and one month later her husband left home to find work in Beijing.

A recent article by Lai Guoqing on caixin.com portrays similar physical and emotional decrepitude in his hometown in rural Hubei Province.

"When night falls, there descends a deadly tranquility in the village, broken only by a few dog barks," he writes.

A lot of uncultivated land lies fallow and becomes overgrown. Old irrigation facilities and water sources (canals, rivers, ponds and wells) are not maintained and dredged, so silt builds up, weeds flourish and they become unusable.

Rejuvenation

What is happening in rural China to some extent provides an interesting footnote to the "vicious circle" Olivier De Schutter mentions in his article "Rethinking global pacts to provide food for the needy" (February 7, Shanghai Daily).

A vicious circle unbeknownst to Schutter is that in the decades of hectic growth, local officials have been tacitly encouraged to fuel economic growth at the expense of farm land, which is virtually expropriated without fair compensation.

Peasants thus dispossessed are more willing to offer themselves to the labor market.

The influx of migrants has already strained transport, housing and education facilities in cities, but nearly all officials choose to ignore the simple truth that there is a limit to the size to which a city can reasonably expand.

Ironically, when local officials flirt with the idea of "building a new countryside," something that is actually supposed to improve rural life, their emphasis is invariably on "building."

To many people, urban amenities (read: consumption) are the only things commensurable with "development."

At the annual central conference on rural work held in Beijing late December, Premier Wen Jiabao said, "We can no longer sacrifice farmers' land property rights to reduce costs of urbanization and industrialization."

He also said that retaining educated, prime-age youths is key to long-term agricultural development.

To make that happen, we need to reinvest traditional rural life with a sense of dignity and talk less about economic growth.

The countryside cannot expect and should not aspire to the headlong growth that characterizes manufacturing and finance.

The reinvigoration of rural life cannot be achieved without a reappreciation of the balance, contentment, self-sufficiency, and slow rhythm that is inherent in rural life.