Winton Dong

    dht620@sina.com

    DURING the long summer break, while children from wealthy Chinese families are enjoying colorful holidays with their parents on domestic and overseas trips, left-behind children face a dilemma: whether to stay alone in their remote villages or visit their parents in big cities.

    Left-behind children are those kids whose parents left for better-paid jobs in bigger cities that are usually far away from their hometowns. Because of the imbalance in development in China between rural and urban areas, as well as inner and coastal areas, many people have to migrate from rural areas and inner provinces to urban areas and coastal provinces to find jobs or better positions. It is estimated that there are 277 million migrant workers in China now. Since living expenses and tuition in big cities are well beyond the reach of migrant workers’ children, many children are separated from their parents and stay in their rural hometowns. Under this circumstance, the total number of left-behind children in China has reached 61 million in 2016 — more than the population of many European nations.

    While staying in villages, left-behind children are usually taken care of by their aged grandparents. However, going to big cities may be more dangerous. It means little more for them than wandering alone in threatening metropolitan jungles while their parents have to work and earn a living, leaving little time to take care of them.

    Lack of care and supervision makes them easy targets for predators. A recent report by China Central Television shows that children from rural societies are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse, with more than 70 percent of such victims in China being between 7 and 14 years old. Even if they can lead a relatively undisturbed life, many left-behind children feel abandoned and inferior to their peers. Lacking a sense of security and belonging will surely cast shadow over their future life in society.

    Without the company, education and guardianship of parents, some left-behind children go to the other extreme and become perpetrators themselves. They linger in Internet bars all day and night, steal, rob, beat, poison, rape or even kill innocent people. A recent survey shows that criminal cases committed by left-behind children in China account for nearly 80 percent of all juvenile delinquencies in the country.

    Children, either from poor or rich families, are the future builders and cornerstone of our country. It is really a shame for a country to make progress at the sacrifice of 61 million left-behind children. China can’t afford to lose them. We must face the music and try our best to solve this social problem as soon as possible.

    For the parents of those left-behind children, no matter where they are, keeping in touch with their kids is very important. It is even more important than making a large sum of money. Through regular greetings and phone calls, children will learn that they are not abandoned — they are loved — even if their parents are thousands of miles away.

    Meanwhile, schools, local governments and rural communities should carefully register the number of left-behind children, regularly check their living and education conditions, and strictly enforce the law to protect their safety and legal rights.

    Moreover, more money should be pumped into nonprofit organizations dedicated to the well-being of left-behind children. Those organizations could sponsor trips for poor children during summer or winter vacations. Such trips would not only broaden their horizons, by giving poor children a chance to see the wonderful world outside their hometowns, but also encourage them to study harder for a better education, so they could try to move up the social ladder.

    (The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)