Excerpts:
In China, “left-behind children” (simplified Chinese: 留守儿童; traditional Chinese: 留守兒童; pinyin: liúshǒu’értóng), also called “stay-at-home children”, are children who remain in rural regions of the country while their parents leave to work in urban areas. In many cases, these children are taken care of by their extended families, usually by grandparents or family friends, who remain in the rural regions.
According to the UNICEF 2018 Annual Report, there are approximately 69 million children left behind by one or both of their parents due to migration, which is equivalent to thirty percent of the children in rural areas. The number of left behind children is unevenly distributed across age groups, regions, and gender. The majority of the left-behind children population is located in south and central regions of China. Six south and central provinces, including Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi, take up 52% of the left-behind child population.
Many factors contribute to the increase of left-behind children in China. Internal migration, which mainly involves massive economically driven population shifts from the rural areas to the cities in China, produces a large population of left-behind children and migrant children. China’s Hukou system (Chinese Household Registration System) hampers left-behind children’s chances of public school enrollment in cities. In some cities where a school enrollment point system are implemented, educational resources in urban areas are not readily accessible to migrants and left-behind children. As a result of the lack of educational resources, many migrant parents left their children at home.
The physical and mental wellbeing of the left-behind children has become one increasing concern for researchers and Chinese government. Some researchers found that the remittance from migrant parents has a positive impact on children’s education and human capital. Many of these children face developmental and emotional challenges as a result of the limited interaction with their biological parents. The lack of infrastructure and parental support have led to additional challenges for left-behind children including quality education, physical well-being, and healthy social relationships. Left-behind children are the victims of the longstanding intergenerational reproduction of social inequality.
I was just a bit obsessed about my past and started digging… This really hits close to home. I was a kid with Rural Hukou (Taishan), my older brother and I weren’t allowed in Guangzhou City’s Public Schools, but my parents tried to keep us closeby by enrolling us in privately-run schools, which are, according to my mother, sub-par compared than the Public Schools. If we had stayed in China, we had to return back to Taishan before Highschool because of the Gaokao stuff that you have to take in where your Hukou is. And since my parents likely would have to continue working their jobs in the city, I would’ve eventually became one of these kids.
So depressing to think about. Imagine not seeing your parents for a year.
Tbf i’ve thought multiple times in my life that it had been better if i had grown up with my aunt while my mother was working all day. essentially what’s described in the article. “being with my mother” (i.e. sitting at home alone) while she was working till late in the evening had no personal value for me. when she came home, she was too tired to do anything.
Pretty fucked up that another school within your own country won’t let you go there. Leaving children with family while working abroad happened here too, but it was always another country, language barrier etc.
I mean, if the schools are at capacity, what can you do? Other than building more schools of course.
Parents are working in the city, they are contributing to the economy, therefore their kids should have the right to have an education right there. There are literally already exists privately-run schools for migrant children, just nationalize it and direct funding into it, and make it up to the same standards as every other school. They literally track movement very well, use the data to make better planning. They can build a hospital in like what? weeks? Spend anywhere from 6 months to like a year or two and you can easily make a structurally-sound school. I mean they knew the migration were happening, they had like sooo many years and they never addressed it.
I agree. Is this “hukou system” is designed to keep people in their region? Does that mean they’re not building city schools on purpose?
Before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, people generally weren’t allowed to migrate. But since the reforms mean they are adopting what is essentailly State Capitalism, and they are opening up trade with the world, they then relaxed the rules on internal migration so they can get people to work at factories and stuff. (My mother worked in sales, and I think my father was driving taxis for a bit, but then kinda went unemployed because jobs are hard to keep) However, even with this relaxation of travel restrictions, even after they “bought” (I think its more like a 70 year lease or some shit, idk what happens when the 70 year is up) an apartment unit in Guangzhou City, settled in there, and found work, rights were still restricted. They bascialy managed to have a workforce of second class residents. I asked my mother if she agree with this “second-class resident” （二等居民） term, and she said yes that’s exactly what it is. It’s impossible to get Guangzhou Hukou, its funny that literally its easiler to get a foreign citizenship, even tho there is xenophobia and racism, at least the legal system recognized our rights and is practically treated the same for most legal stuff (just don’t live in texas/florida lol, those places are very… i mean… racist af)
Is this “hukou system” is designed to keep people in their region?
Yes, because they were paranoid about everyone leaving the farms and then there wouldn’t be enough food. But I think even if their fears were real, its really unfair and unethical to use this Hukou System, I mean some countries, the US for example, just use government subsities to help farmers, and people can freely travel/migrate internally; I don’t know why PRC couldn’t have used an incentive-based system instead of a punitive one.
Does that mean they’re not building city schools on purpose?
I have no idea what they are thinking, but judging by their inaction to address the issue, probably on purpose. Probably part of their paranoid of farmers “mass fleeing” rural areas and there wouldn’t be enough food.
That’s the problem with authoritarian leadership, they get so fixated on something and have a bunch of yes-men rubber-stamping it all, its almost impossible to change course unless there are massive civil unrest (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_COVID-19_protests_in_China), and such demonstrations are usually shut down quickly, you won’t see this on the news ever, contrary all the “No Kings” protests in the US, which is dominating the news.
Fucked up stuff, thank you for elaborating on this
I would point out the distinction is that the term you linked is usually when parents are gone for the entire day and come home very late. But in the case of China’s version of it, the kids are left in a different part of the country alltogether, so they don’t just not see their parents for an entire day, but it could be until the next Chinese New Year before they even have a chance to see their parents.
In my case, I probably don’t quite fit into tge “left behind child” category, except that one time I remembeing being with my maternal grandparents in my mother’s village, I think that was very short term and temporary.
But I do fit into the “Latchkey kid” category, which is although less intense, still kinda fucked up my development. In Guangzhou, I was left at home with my older brother (we were both minors), and sometimes grandmother would come by, other times she was unavailable. So we just stuck at home. I think I just spent too much time indoors, its likely the reason I had nearsigntedness by the time we left for the US. Barely got to see sunlight. I can still remember the entire apartment layout and draw it out because of how frequent I was there, and I sort of have that in mind so if my brother chases me and wanna fight me, I know the hiding spots and escape route.
In the US, I would then be left at afterschool programs until 6:30 PM, dismissal was supposed to be at 6PM, so there was once they people working at the afterschool program was so close into calling CPS, but thank god my mother finally came. We didn’t have citizenship status at that time, so that would’ve been quite chaotic if CPS got involved.
So from birth until I was like 12-13? I’ve spend most of waking hours being away from parents than being with parents. Its not surprising that I have almost zero emotional attachment to my parents.
Humanity is collectively responsible for tearing up families with this hyper aggressive work-focused culture/society
Yeah. Sorry for implying that latchkey is of the same intensity; that was not my intention.
I’m a similar but different sort, upper middle class where my parents whole ass left the country. At 4, I was taken to them and started (1st grade?) in the U S. I still have memories of the chinese daycare.
Somehow still better than the uncle, he worked 996 for another (two?) decades. The other aunt dragged the cousin with her to a US high school.
The funny thing is, when I’m at home in the US, I have tiger parents, when I’m at school, its language barrier, when I was at the after school program, since it was a Chinese-American non-profit, it was run by what I call “tiger teachers” Chinese-Americans who are like I think either 1st gen, 1.5 gen, or 2nd gen immigrants, they are so fucking mean and strict. And these ABC college-age kids want to buff up their resume or for class credits or something so they were volunteering as like teachers assistants or something, and these college kids are also mean as fuck, just like my older brother.
But even with a majority of my peers in these programs being ethnic Chinese, they were ABCs so we had this weird cultural/language barrier, and the closest acquintances I ever had were all just cantonese speakers (some were ABC, some were 1.5 gen immigrant), I don’t think I ever got close to Mandarin speakers eithers.
I remember some of my bullies from the afterschool program were English-only ABCs. I basically just became quiet the entire time. You think racism hurts, try being bullied by those of your own ethnicity for being the “weird socially awkward kid that doesn’t speak english” (they didn’t say that, but I knew that was likely the reason), it hurts way more.
4 of my first years in the US was being “alone in a crowd”. 😭
(And right before the US, I was basically already alone, so its basically my entire life, I got so used to it.)
It’s always weird to me how the FOB Chinese community is so stigmatized by the ABC community. I guess the American way is taking every opportunity to punch downward to make people feel better about themselves.
It’s less american way and more current chinese government doesn’t value human (or otherwise) life interacting badly with capitalism. Same thing in South Korea, too much labor means they can be unreasonably picky for no reason, which leads to the binary outcome of perfection or failure.
If you find chinese people old enough (90+), you can see what precommunist values look like. Those are almost gone now.
Which leads to the dark joke,
What’s the only thing (new) chinese people hate more than each other?
Everyone else.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. I can’t imagine the psychological toll. I hope that in a few decades we will collectively look back on this time as an unfortunate side effect of prioritizing only material progress while ignoring inner psychological and emotional reality and will have learned to balance work with family, community, leisure, education, art, and everything else that makes life good and meaningful.
