China: Children who are left behind · Global Voices
Jennifer Zhang

On November 12, several days before the International Children's Day, an explosion erupted in an illegal fire cracker factory in Guangxi which resulted in 2 children workers dead and 11 others injured.
According to the Southern Weekend's report, these children victims were left behind by their parents, who are migrant workers and have to work in cities all year long to earn money and support their families. They lived with their aging grandparents and struggled to work before and after school time to earn some pocket money for snacks.
The children workers phenomenon is not rare in Yanghui village where the tragedy took place. The lack of government regulation is part of the reason behind, but on the other, “if these children have their parents around and being taken good care of, we will not have such a big tragedy,” Yang Youji, the village party chief, was quoted as saying.
According to the 2005 population census, there were 120 million farmers who worked or did business in cities, and the number of children they left behind amounted to 20 million. 88.2% left-behind children could only contact their parents by phone, but 53.5% of them talked with their parents in less than three minutes.
Tong Dahuan, a Chinese blogger in Tianya, pointed out another social issue in this fire-cracker incident related blog post, “Who Should Apologize for the Tragedy of the Left-behind Children”:
前两年，来自北京、上海等地的有关调查即显示，新移民二代的犯罪率是当地户籍青少年的三倍！留守儿童和流动儿童的悲剧命运，正在引领着我们走向一个不可知的未来。
Tong argued that it is the unfair education system that resulted in this kind of tragedy.
中国数以亿计的农村人到城市打工，他们的孩子经常被城市的学校排除在外，或被收更高的学费，城市里也没有专门供这些孩子受教育的非正式学校（打工子弟学校常常被教育主管部门以教育条件不达标为由围追堵截甚至赶尽杀绝）。更有甚者，在户籍加学籍的高考报考制度下，即使打工子弟历尽千辛万苦过五关斩六将在父母打工所在地读完了高中，他们也将面临无处高考的命运。这一切导致大量孩子过早被迫与父母分离，成为“没爹没妈”留守儿童。
Tong said there have been a lot of criticism against the government’s outdated residents certificate system and education system since 1997, but there seemed almost no progress on these two issues.
现行户籍与教育制度，已经严重违反了人权、人道、人伦，也违反了我们1990年签署、1991年全国人大批准、1992年3月1日起即对我国生效的联合国《儿童国际公约》
请问，不让孩子就地平等地接受教育和高考，是为了孩子的最大利益吗？用户籍制度生生将孩子和父母拆散，这样的分离符合儿童的最大利益吗?”
Another Tianya Blogger, Li Hui, questioned why the children workers are always the left-behind children?
为什么黑童工都是留守儿童？这背后，不仅是一个非法雇佣童工的问题，更深层次的原因，是城乡二元分化，以及由此导致的教育资源发展严重不均衡。
In the Southern Weekend report's comment section, many netizens left their comments, some blamed the residents registration system as the root of this tragedy.
For example, Yanchenyu said,
户籍制度是造成留守儿童的根源，城市人口享受农民工带来的繁荣，却不为他们的健康提供保障，不为他们的小孩提供教育。
li101947  questioned the role of law enforcement:
已经有多少儿童遭受了苦难？还有多少儿童将要遭受苦难？难道就不能有组织、制度保障他们的权益吗？法律的执行怎么了？