Stricter laws can check child abuse

A series of child abuse cases has hit the headlines recently: four steel needles inserted into the body of a baby girl by her biological father; a seven-year-old girl drowned by her step-mother; little children in kindergarten beaten up by teachers. Such atrocities have appalled people across the country and left them wondering how children can be better protected.

Unfortunately, the existing laws are not powerful enough to ensure punishment to perpetrators or deter potential offenders. Often, police don't investigate minor child abuse cases because people generally believe that parents and teachers do have the right to physically punish a child. According to traditional thinking, the rod should not be spared when it comes to children's education, and physical punishment helps children grow up into knowledgeable, responsible and obedient adults.

So police intervene only if children suffer from serious physical injuries. In such cases, the law enforcement agencies often apply the Law of the People's Republic of China on Administrative Penalties for Public Security (or Law on Public Security). According to the law, a person could be detained for up to 15 days and fined a maximum of 1,000 yuan ($163.4) for intentionally causing physical harm to a child. But the clause is rarely invoked in a child abuse case.

The other two important child protection laws are the Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of Minors (or Law on Protection of Minors) and the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (or Criminal Law). Although many clauses of the Law on Protection of Minors are devoted to protecting children's rights, it is by nature a soft law that does not advocate strict punishment, and thus plays a limited role in deterring child abuse.

The most powerful weapon against child abuse could be the Criminal Law, but it is not designed to deal with such cases. The Criminal Law only deals with the "crime of abuse", not the "crime of child abuse", and even the clauses on the crime of abuse have four inherent loopholes when it comes to deterring child abuse.