A plea for the sake of left-behind kids

Five-year-old Ma Siyue caught our attention when we were taking a walk on the narrow ridges of a beautiful, terraced rice field near our hotel in Yuanyang in southern Yunnan province. She wanted to show us a nearby observation desk for the UNESCO-listed terraced rice field and also asked us, sotto voce, if we had some candies.

We did find some candies for her. At first, we did not realize that Siyue, with a crew cut, was actually a girl. It was the hotel owner who told us later that Siyue and her 7-year-old sister live with their grandfather in a village (which literally translates to Love Village) while their divorced parents work in faraway cities. In fact, their mother has never returned.

Cases like this are not rare in the mountainous regions, where many young people move to faraway cities in search of jobs. Most of them simply cannot afford to take their children along, given their usually long working hours and the huge cost of raising children in the cities.

I had read about the hollowing out of China's vast countryside in the past decades as hundreds of millions of young people moved to the cities to work as migrant workers, leaving their children behind with their grandparents in now desolate farmlands. But I did not know how acute the problem was until I came face-to-face with Siyue. Ever since, I have been hearing such stories from everywhere — from my friend, who is now a deputy county magistrate in Jiangxi province, and my niece in Fuding, a famous white tea-growing area in Fujian province.

After returning to Shanghai last week, I bought some clothes, schoolbags, stationery, books and candies and sent them in a big box to the girls. It is expected to reach them on Saturday, before New Year's Day. But I want to do more. I had an idea about how we can mobilize more people to help boys and girls like Siyue but I realized that many people have already launched programs on social media or through various NGOs in this regard.

Most young people are drawn to work in the cities because of the huge income gap between cities and the countryside. They would return if there were opportunities back home. Many rural governments have tried hard to woo back such young people. In fact, Azheke village, only a 10-minute drive from Siyue's village, has developed a successful tourism project by cashing in on its beautiful terraced rice fields and traditional mushroom-shaped houses. The project generated good revenue, which was shared with the villagers, drawing many young people who had left Azheke to return and be part of the tourism boom.

But not every village is as successful as Azheke.

Parents leaving their children back home have a huge negative impact on their lives, as well as their education. I was also told that many grandparents are not good at taking care of their grandchildren, especially their education. In fact, sometimes the grandparents are so clueless that, if a need arises, the teachers interact with the kids' parents through WeChat and other social media platforms.

In an article in January, Chen Changsheng, a professor of public administration at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Jiaozuo Committee in Henan province, cited a field study which showed that nearly 54 percent of the local men aged 15 to 59 went to work in the cities, leaving behind women, children and elders.

A National Bureau of Statistics report in April said that by the end of 2024 there were around 299.73 million migrant workers in China, up 2.2 million from a year before.

There is no doubt that life in the Chinese countryside has become much better than what it used to be 20 years ago, something my niece confirmed. But the sheer fact that there are still so many children like Siyue is disturbing.

Education for kids, especially the left-behind kids in the vast countryside, is critical to China's future prosperity. The government, society and every concerned citizen must play their part to help improve the livelihood and education of children in the poor and remote countryside.

The author is a China Daily columnist.