Left-behind children: the social price of China's economic boom

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹This data can be found in the news release of the Chinese Xinhua News Agency on May 26, 2009, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2009-05/26/content_11440077.htm [Accessed on 18 October 2010].

²The research team pioneered the first comprehensive research on left-behind children in China in 2004, and has expanded the research to left-behind women and left-behind elderly since 2006. There are in total 26 members on the team, including staff members and PhD candidates of the college. The team has also conducted interventions towards the target group of left-behind children in several rural communities in China. The team's research on the left-behind population is of leading significance within the Chinese academic community. Many media have done in-depth coverage of the team's research on left-behind populations. Selected media reports in English language can be found at (1) Sun Shangwu, ‘Rural children need a safety net’, China Daily, 12 September 2005, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-09/10/content_476711.htm; (2) Lu Weifeng, ‘Left-behind children should not be forgotten’, China Daily, 21 October 2005, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-10/21/content_486602.htm; (3) ‘Left-behind kids struggle when parents migrate’, Reuters, 7 February 2007, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-02/07/content_803948.htm; (4) Loretta Chao, ‘As China booms, millions of children are left behind’, The Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2007.

³1 ha = 15 mu.

⁴1 USD = 6.8 yuan.

⁵Based on a survey in 15 provinces done by the All China Women's Federation in 2008, 48.3% of the left-behind children whose parents both migrated from rural China were reared by grandparents (http://acwf.people.com.cn/GB/6928973.html [Accessed on 18 October 2010]). Research done in five provinces in south China showed that 69 percent of the left-behind children were cared for by their grandparents (Ye and Pan 2008).

⁶I had the experience of taking the bus during my research visit: a vanload of students bumps along the uneven road. I was told that sometimes it contains 30 children, but there are only 17 seats available. The youngest student who takes the bus alone is only five-years-old.

⁷A survey on left-behind children reported that 75 percent of the grandfathers and 84 percent of the grandmothers had only primary school education; see http://acwf.people.com.cn/GB/6928973.html [Accessed on 18 October 2010].

⁸He Congzhi (2008) indicated that 18 percent of left-behind elderly received nothing from their migrated children. Twenty-nine per cent of them got remittances of less than 200 yuan per year, and nearly half of them got remittances of less than 500 yuan per year.

⁹‘Dagong’ means going outside to get waged jobs. People in Sichuan Province say ‘zhaoqian’ instead of ‘dagong’. ‘Zhaoqian’ more actively refers to finding a job outside the village and getting money.

¹⁰In 2006, Jiangxi Province started the project in Xinyu city. This project includes many elements, e.g. establishing a student record card, a contact card for left-behind children, providing lectures on caregiving, and so on.

¹¹This policy emphasizes several measures to care for the left-behind children, e.g. opening guardian's training schools, organizing volunteers to help left-behind children, presenting and extending good examples to other places, and so on.

¹²In 2001, ‘Decision of the State Council on Elementary Education Reform and Development’ firstly advocated the establishment of boarding schools. The schools are funded by central or local governments and professional teachers are staffed to look after the children's daily life, including study, living and emotional development.

¹³Guardian schools were initiated by the government in the 1980s. They are managed by the Education Department and All China Women's Federation and organized by the middle and primary schools Their purpose is to emphasize family education and train parents on how to educate their children at home.

¹⁴Acting parent practice is led by local governments and calls for volunteers to act on behalf of the left-behind children's parents, and be responsible for their studies, lives, psychology and spiritual needs in order to help make up for the lack of family love.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ye Jingzhong

This section of Grassroots Voices is an extension of the published research article entitled ‘Differentiated childhoods: impacts of rural labor migration on left-behind children in China’ in The Journal of Peasant Studies Vol. 38, No. 2, 2011, 353–375, authored by Ye Jingzhong and Pan Lu. This introduction has the same research background as that article. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable comments and advice.