Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

BEIJING (AP) -- Thousands of farmers in southwest China rioted at a government office after authorities imposed heavy fines on families that had more children than allowed under the country's family planning policy, a newspaper and a villager said Monday.

Anti-riot police were called in after villagers set fires and smashed cars Saturday at the Shapo township government office in the Guangxi region, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News said.

Danwei gives a rundown of the Net response to the 'slave labour' case that has been the storm in Chinese news this week. For anyone just tuning in, brick kilns in Shanxi province were found to be using slave labour (including abducted children) to make their stackable product.

This Danwei article also contains the original note from the father's of the children that was sent to the central government and sparked the investigation in the first place.

Chinese families across the country are able to send their children to school tuition-free in the nine-year compulsory education period as of Monday. From this fall semester, about 28.21 million urban students in primary schools and in junior high schools joined rural students to benefit from the plan, according to the Ministry of Education. The students still must pay for textbooks and uniforms.

A new film set to air on the UK's Channel 4 next week is causing all sorts of stirs in the Middle Kingdom as it shows evidence that upwards of 70,000 children are abducted a year, destined for parents willing to pay for a (usually male) child.

As they paraded cheerfully into the Bird’s Nest stadium in their brightly coloured cultural costumes, the 56 smiling children were described as coming from China’s 56 ethnic groups. The supposedly ethnic minority children were actually all from the dominant Han group.

Only one child orphaned in China’s devastating earthquake this year has won adoption so far. The process of finding new homes for 88 children whose parents have been confirmed dead or who have no relatives able to care for them has been hampered by bureaucratic red tape and by age-old prejudices against the disabled.

“The cycle of poverty can only be broken through education. Poor peasant farmers struggle to pay the annual school fees for their children to go to primary school but very, very few can afford the higher costs of sending the children to Junior Middle School or beyond. We know that if the children can learn to be comfortable with foreign visitors and speak some English they will be able to get work. Volunteer English Teachers...

SHANGHAI - The death toll from a highly infectious virus that preys on children rose to 24 Sunday as it spread to a new province amid heightened efforts by China's Health Ministry to contain it.

The official Xinhua News Agency said an 18-month old boy who died in Foshan city in Guangdong province Friday had enterovirus 71, known as EV-71. Another child who died in the same district on April 25 also tested positive, it said.

The deaths follow 22 already reported in central Anhui province, 1,000 miles to the north. More than 3,000 have been infected.

In China, the children of those locked up carry the stigma of their parents' crimes. A few find ways to help, but there may be at least 600,000 such kids who are all but abandoned.