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China law 'forcing' children to visit parents ridiculed
AFP Updated July 1, 2013, 9:58 pm
BEIJING (AFP) - A Chinese law requiring family members to visit their elderly relatives went into effect Monday to howls of online ridicule, as the country's huge population ages rapidly.
The regulation "forces" children to visit their parents, the state-run Global Times newspaper said, with concerns growing over increasing numbers of "empty nest" homes.
China's rapid development has challenged its traditional extended family unit, and reports of elderly people being neglected or mistreated by their children have shocked the country.
Last year a farmer in the eastern province of Jiangsu faced a barrage of online criticism after domestic media revealed he had kept his 100-year-old mother in a pig sty.
More than 14 percent of China's population, or 194 million people, are aged over 60, according to the most recent figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The United Nations estimates that by 2050, 30 percent of Chinese will be 60 or over, up from 10 percent in 2000 and compared to a worldwide average of 20 percent.
The growing proportion of the elderly is the result of China's controversial one-child policy, which was launched in the late 1970s to control population growth.
Internet users generally express concern over the aged, who are highly respected in the close-knit Chinese family unit. But many took to China's Twitter-like microblogs to criticise the new measures.
"A country actually legislates respecting its parents?" said one of the eight million people to comment on the story on Sina Weibo.
"This is simply an insult to the nation."
Another poster said: "The government uses legislation to protect the elderly, but in reality it is just to put all the blame on to their children.
"The government should have thought of how they would address this problem when it brought in the one-child policy."
Elderly Chinese often live alone in "empty nest" homes, as a result of their children finding work in other areas of the country.
"Many children working in the cities are very busy," Sun Wenguang, a retired academic from Shandong University in Jinan, told AFP.
"Also, many elderly people in the rural areas do not have any social security or pensions.
"To help provide for parents, this legislation has been enacted, but it will be very difficult to implement and is probably just a gesture to satisfy the people."
The state-run Shanghai Daily said the new law gives parents the power to apply for mediation or bring a case to court, but experts are unclear about how the measures will be enforced, or how often visits are required.
"More quantitative standards and measures need to be added," Xia Xueluan, a professor with Peking University's Institute of Sociology and Anthropology, told the Global Times.
The measure "looks more like a reminder for young people to refocus on the traditional values of filial piety rather than a compulsory law", he said.
China introduces law requiring children to visit parents
Chinese children will now face court action if they do not regularly visit and care for their elderly parents.
Chinese children are now required by law to regularly visit and care for their parents. Photo: ALAMY
By Malcolm Moore, Beijing
2:33PM BST 01 Jul 2013
"Family members who live apart from their parents should visit often or send their regards to their parents," states China's new Elderly Protection law, which came into force on Monday.
The new law adds that anyone "neglecting the elderly" could face court action.
Although filial piety has traditionally been one of China's core virtues, there have been increasing reports in the media of parental neglect, culminating last year in a case of a woman in her nineties who was forced by her son to live in a pigsty for two years.
Almost 200 million Chinese are over the age of 60, of whom nearly a third live in poverty, spending less than 3,200 yuan (£330) a year, according to a recent survey by Chinese and international academics.
However, the new law seems both unenforceable and largely symbolic. There is no specified penalty for breaking it.
In Singapore, by contrast, parents can sue their adult children for a monthly allowance. More than 400 applications, with an 80 per cent success rate, have been made since the law was passed in 1999.
On the Chinese internet, commenters noted that the law did not take into account the fact that China has over 260 million migrant workers who live far from their family homes.
"You think migrant workers do not want to spend more time with their parents?" asked one person on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, to his 270,000 followers.
"We work every weekend and only get to go home once a year. The overtime we get paid does not even cover our train ticket. It is up to our bosses whether we get to see our parents," he added.
"Our parents live thousands of miles away from us. Whether I can see them is my business. You want to make it illegal if I do not see them? This law is nonsense," noted a journalist at a state-run magazine.
