Data from the Supreme People’s Court showed that 22.94 per cent of court cases in violent crimes – such as murder, robbery and kidnapping – involving minors below the age of 18, between 2021 and 2023, did not have sufficient parental supervision, with many coming from single-parent homes or parents who remarried.
In China, the term “left-behind children” refers to children who stay behind in rural regions when their parents leave to work in urban areas. In many cases, these children are taken care of by their other relatives, such as grandparents, who remain in the rural regions.
A study conducted by government think-tank The China Youth and Children Research Center of over 3,000 under-18 students in China between 2020 and 2022 showed that 53.5 per cent have been bullied in school, but only 20.3 per cent would report the issue to them teachers, school or parents if the bullying happened for the second time.
Assistant Professor Mu Zheng at the department of sociology and anthropology at the National University of Singapore told The Straits Times that the problem of school bullying in China may have grown in recent years, given how more parents are moving away to the cities for work and leaving their children behind with relatives.
There is also a lack of attention paid to children’s mental health and psychological development as well as children’s exposure to violent content online, said Prof Mu, whose research includes migration and families in both Singapore and China.
“Too much emphasis has been placed on children’s education and cognitive outcomes (and) the monetary importance of parenting,” she added.
Mrs Niu Juyi, 37, an accountant in Beijing who has an 11-year-old son, told ST that “parents have been very worried about the cases of school bullying, especially the one about the 13-year-old boy who was killed by his classmates.”
She said that she would talk to her son whenever she reads about these bullying cases, and encourage him to go to her about problems he faces in school, including relationships with his classmates.
“It’s also important for parents to know their child’s classmates’ parents, because they will sometimes hear about what happened to their child based on other classmates’ accounts,” she said, adding that this method has helped her son’s classmates who had been bullied.
A divorced parent in Jilin province’s capital city Changchun in north-eastern China, who wanted to be known only as Mrs Pan, said her 16-year-old daughter had been bullied in school a few years ago for not living with her father. She declined to give her full name to protect her child’s identity.
“At first, I told my daughter to ignore those snide comments, but she came back crying one day. “She said she talked back to one of the bullies and got a slap in return,” the sales executive, 40, said.
“That’s when I scolded the school principal, her form teacher and the other girl’s parents,” she said. And that put a stop to the matter.
“I’m really glad things didn’t get out of hand, but I still feel very guilty for not doing more when she first told me about the bullying.”
- Additional reporting by Miao Chunlei
