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.
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)
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.
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