HONG KONG—China’s street children are finding their way back onto the streets in their thousands in spite of a government assistance package to help them, according to aid workers.
And charities set up to fill the gap between the neediest Chinese youngsters and government help have proved controversial, with some accused of maltreatment and child abuse.
Every year, around 1,000 children come through the doors of the Guangzhou Homeless Children’s Protection and Assistance Center because of dire poverty, because parents have gone to other provinces as migrant workers, or because of divorce or problems at school.
Sixty percent of children take to thieving and picking pockets out of hunger, according to a survey by a Guangzhou aid center.
The Center estimates that around 40 percent of those who come through its doors will return to a life on the streets after receiving assistance and being sent back to their family of origin.
The official news agency Xinhua estimated in 2007 that the number of homeless children in China exceeded 1 million, with 150,000 more expected to add to that total each year.
Lu Chuan is a beggar on the streets of Beijing alongside his mother.
“All I really want is to go to school,” he said.
“I just want to go to school. That’s all. I don’t care about anything else.”
Hard work
While the government has invested large sums of money in addressing the problem of homeless children on its streets, they are powerless to solve the problem at its root: when things go wrong for children at home.
Sun Village, a charitable children’s home foundation with branches in Beijing and two other Chinese cities, was set up 10 years ago by former prison officer Zhang Shuqin to provide homes and education to children whose parents are serving prison sentences.
“It is extremely hard work,” said Zhang, whose organization has been featured in official China’s media, drawing funds from donors across the country.
“We take on full responsibility for these children. We have to, because of the burden of trust that has been placed upon us.”
“The children here eat beans, vegetables, meat, and eggs. We even have a chicken farm,” she said, in response to allegations that the children in Sun Village are malnourished and mistreated.
Investigative journalist Zhang Qing said she had spent years pursuing claims that children in Sun Village homes were mistreated, including allegations of sexual abuse.
One Beijing-based lawyer said he had received a letter from a young girl at Sun Village in the capital.
“One of the young girls in Sun Village wrote a letter to say that she was no longer a virgin because she had been raped,” the lawyer said, adding that the girl had identified her attacker as a close associate of the home’s management.
“This problem is quite widespread,” said Zhang Qing, who said that while children confirmed some of the accounts in private, they refused to speak to her on the record, for fear of reprisals.
Children try to run
Zhang Shuqin and her staff have repeatedly denied all claims of mistreatment and abuse.
“We use every means at our disposal to raise these children,” Zhang said.
“This is the truth. If anyone doesn’t believe us, they are welcome to come and take a look.”
But staff admitted that children do frequently try to run away from the home.
“Some of them are homesick, they miss their mother and father. But many of them come from homes that are already broken,” said Zhang Mingzhe, Zhang Shuqin’s assistant at the Beijing Sun Village.
“The children can’t assimilate such conflict, and it leaves them with a constant feeling of loss. Sometimes that comes out in the relationship with members of staff working here. This is psychologically complicated,” he added.
A large proportion of China’s homeless are children, with the majority of them gathered in the warmer climate of southern China, in particular Guangzhou.
A new system aimed at helping the growing number of homeless on the streets of China’s cities has done little to curb the number of beggars, homeless people, and street children, officials say.
Numerous homeless children
The exact number of homeless people in China is unknown, but the national relief system set up in 2003 initially targeted around 800,000 homeless children and adults.
Officials estimate that around 150,000 street children roam China’s cities, and have pledged to double the number of child shelters to 300 by 2010.
Authorities in Aksu and Kashgar cities in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region invested 5.5 million yuan in two centers for homeless children in a bid to address the problem of homeless minors.
But they were unable to address the fundamental needs that drove the children away from home in the first place.
Regulations lacking
The main problem with charitable care is a lack of government regulation, according to Zhang Qing.
“The government plays no role in regulating these organizations. No single department or agency is responsible for doing this sort of work,” she said.
“So, regulation is very lax. Another reason is that people might start off doing this sort of thing out of the goodness of their hearts, but ... then they are going to run into more and more problems as they realize how much profit they can make, because they already live in such a corrupt environment.”
“And no one is supervising them.”
Tens of thousands of Chinese people wander the streets of China’s cities, camping under bridges and overpasses, or selling trash to buy bunk beds in shanty-town accommodations.
Many are disabled, entitled to scant government aid, and forced to busk or beg for a living.
Others have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for urban redevelopment, while many are on the run from local officials about whom they have tried to complain.
A 2003 survey in Beijing counted a total of 57,000 homeless people who requested help in the entire municipal area, while officials estimate that the average number of homeless is around 10,000 in any given year.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Bai Fan. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.