Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

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.

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.

Stories like the one about slave workers in brickyards may not have become public without citizen journalism. Government has "launched a number of online crackdowns" since January.
"A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal", reports The Age, Australia.

“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...

Chevrolet Red Chalk Program volunteers visit the children and homes of migrant workers outside of Shanghai, glimpsing into the lives of China's poorest citizens.

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.

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.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of children have been snatched from their families in China, a Sky News investigation has found.

And families who have had children taken claim the authorities are covering up the abductions.
(more links at bottom of article)