This week, China announced a law that would prohibit children younger than 18 from playing online video games during the school week and would limit their game time to no more than three hours on weekends. The announcement raised more than a few eyebrows among parents and researchers, and in some circles prompted gallows humor. (“Hmm, if only an authoritarian government could step in to limit my kids’ game time!”)
But as a parent and research psychologist who has been studying the uses and effects of video games for more than a decade, I found the news troubling.
We don’t need government regulation on leisure time.… Seguir leyendo »
The American entertainment industry has spent years trying to placate the Chinese government to expand its access to the world’s largest market. Companies such as Disney and the National Basketball Association have disgraced themselves by compromising on values such as free speech and human rights in exchange for what they hoped would be boatloads of cash.
Agreeing to censorship in exchange for money is a bad look under any circumstances. As recent developments show, it can also turn out to be a bad bargain.
The buzzy new front in this great-power pop-culture war is the announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime is slapping limits on the time minors can spend playing online video games.… Seguir leyendo »
In the spring of 2015, 13-year-old Huang Kailong had just skipped a grade, from fifth to seventh, and her future sparkled with promise. Then she ran away from home. In a letter to her parents, Kailong explained the reason for leaving: She felt unloved.
Kailong grew up in Jidao, a picturesque village in Guizhou Province, one of the least developed in China. In her letter, she reminded her parents that they had left her with an aunt when she was just a year old. During the bulk of her childhood, her parents would go away for about four months every year to chop sugar cane in Guangdong Province, and they’d leave her with different relatives, an arrangement she had resented.… Seguir leyendo »
When I was 13, living in the outskirts of Nanjing, my math teacher molested all the girls in our class, including me. Under the pretense of checking my work, he would lean over me, his face so close that I could smell his garlic breath, and he’d move his hand up my shirt, touching my chest.
Apart from trying to avoid him, we didn’t take any action. We knew what he was doing was wrong, but it never occurred to us to report him. A teacher in a Chinese classroom holds tremendous authority over students, and we didn’t even know the term “sexual abuse.”… Seguir leyendo »
Every year on June 1, China celebrates its beautiful children. Children’s Day in China brings smiles to the faces of millions of kids who survived the one-child policy and its consequences. It’s a celebration of life, especially meaningful because so many children in China were never allowed to live. Children eat sweets and participate in fun activities, while the others (China reports 400 million others) are forgotten.
In 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton famously proclaimed that “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.” In the same way, I believe that children’s rights are human rights, too. But for many children in China, wrongs have stripped away life, security, education, families and comfort.… Seguir leyendo »
According to a State Department report released this week, American citizens adopted 6,493 children from China in 2006, a decline of 18 percent from the previous year’s total of 7,906. And yet, just over a month ago, this newspaper reported that China had prepared strict new criteria for foreign adoption applications because the country claimed it lacked “available” babies to meet the “spike” in demand.
China has always limited foreign adoptions, and it does not publish reliable statistics on the number of children in its orphanages. So how is one to know whether the decrease in adoptions reflects a lack of supply or a lack of demand?… Seguir leyendo »
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