A labor rights organization in Hong Kong said recently that child labor in China was "a widespread, systemic and increasingly serious problem" and goes on to blame these problems on the education system. In June, there was a scandal of brickyard slavery in the Shanxi province of China. The Chinese public was apparently shocked when they were informed that some of these enslaved workers were children. This shock would lead you to believe that this was an isolated incident yet the China Labor Bulletin group in Hong Kong says that this is a wide spread and growing problem after doing field research. Although China has strict laws about workers only being hired after age 16, it seems that these laws are not being enforced. This week, Beijing announced that they are going to be setting up a ministry level panel to start fighting human trafficking. In China, children are obligated to attend a mandatory 9 years of schooling yet many drop out early and nothing is done about it. China has focused too much recently on funding Universities leaving their primary education to founder. In the last year though, China announced that they will be putting more funds into basic education which will hopefully encourage many students to continue schooling instead of dropping out to work. Han Dongfang (founder of the China Labor Bulletin) wants China to allow trade unions and civic groups to monitor the child labor situation but there is no word yet of anything to this effect.
I think that it is a little ridiculous to believe that the Chinese people were shocked to hear about the child labor going on in their country. Even I, someone who is young and living in a different country was not at all surprised to hear of China's child labor problem. I am glad though to hear that the China Labor Bulletin is researching this problem and getting facts to present to the Chinese government to attempt to coerce them into enforcing their laws by using trade organizations and civic groups to monitor this situation. I have been researching this same topic every week for this blog, and it seems that many of the issues are blamed on the education system which may very well be the case but I do not believe that this is the entire issue, especially in China. Here, they are sent to a mandatory 9 years of schooling and it seems to be the parents who take their kids out of school. You cannot blame the education system for not doing their job if the parents will not send their children to school. I do understand if the parents are paying for school and cannot afford it so that is why I think that it is good that China has started to fund basic education so that these parents will not have to pay for their children's schooling.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-09-09-voa9.cfm
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