Reports of parents’ deaths by China’s ‘left-behind’ children prompt a closer look at the family dynamic

Youngsters’ reports of deaths of parents who left them to seek work in cities substantially exceeded China’s national death rate, NGO’s study found

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Students prepare for another day at Molong Primary School in a remote village in Yunnan province. The school includes 279 students who have been left behind by parents who moved to cities to seek work. Photo: Imaginechina

Published: 9:16am, 27 Jul 2017Updated: 11:14am, 27 Jul 2017

The number of “left-behind” children in rural China who told researchers gathering data for a survey that at least one of their parents was dead substantially exceeded the national death rate, prompting a closer look at the extent to which the responses reflect the youngsters’ relationships with their families – or feelings of desperation and abandonment.

Students gather at the gates of Xianghe Primary School, in the town of Xianghe, in southern China's Guangxi autonomous region. Photo: AFP

Beijing-based NGO On the Road to School, which studied rural Chinese children left in the care of relatives or family friends when parents moved to urban areas to seek work, found that 11.4 per cent of left-behind respondents reported that their father or mother had died recently. By contrast, China’s annual death rate stands at around 0.7 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

On the Road to School studied left-behind children in 17 provinces, including Gansu, Guizhou, Hebei and Hubei, receiving nearly 15,000 questionnaires back.

“It is obvious that some children filled in wrong information in the questionnaire deliberately [as a way] for making fun and letting off steam,” the organisation said in their report released last week.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the children’s answers should not be seen as an utterance meant to inflict harm on their parents, but as a cry for more companionship and care.

“It reflects that children were very disappointed and desperate due to a lack of a parent’s [companionship] and their parent-child relationship was very estranged,” he said. “Parents need to accompany their kids and let them feel that they were not abandoned.”

Children play in the schoolyard of Chongshan Primary School in Longfu Township, in southern China's Guangxi autonomous region Photo: AFP

Left-behind children suffer psychological harm that potentially poses a serious problem in later life, according to Xiong.