The majority of Chinese parents are well-versed to the phrase “when in doubt, beat it out”, choosing to physically discipline their children, and the poor little tykes are also not getting enough sleep.
Yang Xiong, director of the Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies under the academy, said family violence is the worst kind of harm children can experience. “Serious violence may cause disability or even death. When children are beaten they have a strong will to resist and some will even seek revenge in the way of self-destruction,” Yang said. About 5,800 students in 10 cities, including Shanghai, answered the survey’s questions. About 15 percent of respondents said they had been hit by teachers and 38.6 percent had been teased by students in higher grades.
According to the survey, 10.4 percent of sampled children below 12 slept less than eight hours a day. The proportion keeps increasing with the age going up. Among 15-year-old children, the proportion reached 44.6 percent.
Previous news reports suggested that only Olympic bound sprogs were subject to physical discipline, nay abuse, as Olympic gold-winning Brit Matthew Pinsent was “shocked and disturbed” at the degree of abuse levelled at the children, which he even found “chilling”. The school predictably completely denied what he had seen.
The head of the International Gymnastics Federation Bruno Grandi said that the abuse of Chinese child gymnasts falls under the large category of China-related political correctness and therefore he is too weak/afraid/PC to actually say anything about it is a “delicate issue“.
A government white paper stated:
[A]s China develops economically and socially, an important task facing the Chinese Government is to constantly improve children’s conditions and promote activities and programs to help children.
So don’t worry too much. The reports describing punishment dealt out in Chinese homes do not state whether the parents are going 10 rounds with the kids, or whether they merely have a hankering for a spankering. In our experience in the domestic Chinese circle (ie, every day of our lives) a spanking is usually administered out, certainly with more severity than in average Western homes, but we find Shanghainese parents rarely “beat” their children. We can’t be sure of other areas in China, partly because our new Chinese parents have placed other news stories a little … out of our reach.
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