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Correspondents Report - China's homeless rate growing
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2004/s1108983.htm]
Correspondents Report - Sunday, 16 May , 2004
Reporter: John Taylor
HAMISH ROBERTSON: China may have made some amazing economic progress in recent years, but the shopping malls and skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai are a glittering facade that obscures a darker side to the country's economic transformation.
Begging and vagrancy are now rife in all of China's major cities, and the authorities are also being confronted by the growing problem of homeless children. Officially there are now 150,000 children who are forced to live by their wits on the streets of China's cities.
Our China Correspondent John Taylor compiled this report.
JOHN TAYLOR: In an underpass below Beijing's main artery the avenue of eternal peace, the usual assortment of buskers, vendors and beggars compete for attention.
Ms Wang, with her right arm amputated just above the elbow, sits against a wall cradling her 5-month-old son, Yongjian. She's a beggar, and a living example of the growing wealth gap in China.
MS WANG: I have no way to make a living at home. That's why I came here. If there is any way out at home, I won't come to Beijing at all.
JOHN TAYLOR: Ms Wang, who out of pride won't reveal her full name, is from a farming area in northern China. Her injury means she can't do as much work on the farm.
She says her husband can't support her and their son and his own parents at the same time, so she has come Beijing to beg, and brought along her baby boy.
Ms Wang wants to find work, and says she won't beg with Yongjian once he's old enough to understand what she's doing.
MS WANG: The "work" of begging, how to say, if there is any other way out, I won't do this at all, especially with a child in my arm. You know why? Because it is not good for the child. What I mean is that when the child gets older, say if he can walk or follow me, maybe next year or later, I won't sit here begging. That's bad for the future of the child, I think.
JOHN TAYLOR: In Beijing however, many children do beg. Probably some are part of organised criminal gangs, but others are also probably acting out of desperation.
Yong Jian and his mother aren't strictly homeless – they pay rent on a room they share with others with the proceeds of their begging.
But lawyer Tong Lihua, Vice General Secretary of the China Society of Juvenile Delinquency Research, says China has thousands of homeless children.
"The official figure is 150,000. But I believe the actual figure is higher than that. But no one has done a very careful investigation on the real figure", he says.
Mr Tong says the issue of homeless children is relatively new to China. He believes there are many different reasons why so many children are homeless. But he says the majority have something in common – they come from very poor families.
"Actually, for a long period of time, when China still had a planned economy, until 1978, there were only very few homeless children," he says.
"After the reform and opening of China, with the economic development and urbanisation and with the widening gap of people's living conditions, the phenomenon of homeless children appeared", he says.
JOHN TAYLOR: Mr Tong believes Chinese authorities have begun to address the problem: new child protection laws are being ushered in; shelters are being established, as are various protection organisations. Child homelessness is a complex issue, he says, but authorities have no choice but to act.
"From a moral sense, we have to protect these children", he says. "From the most pragmatic sense, to achieve stability, we have to protect them. Otherwise, if we don't protect them right now, if we don't correct their bad habits, many of them will go down a criminal path. Then the costs for society will be much higher", he says.
This is John Taylor in Beijing, for Correspondent's Report.
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