For nearly two years, Gong Junli had been waiting, imagining that his 8-year-old daughter Xinyue would eventually be brought to justice, ever since her body was found stabbed multiple times in a poplar forest in northwest China.
But justice becomes complicated when the defendants are also children.
According to police, the boy who killed Xinyue was only 13. The trial, which opens on Wednesday, will try to answer a question in Chinese society: How should China deal with young children accused of heinous crimes?
Countries around the world have long struggled to balance punishment and leniency for children. But the debate is particularly striking in China, where relative leniency toward juvenile offenders stands in stark contrast to the limited rights of adult criminal defendants. For decades, the government has emphasized educating and reforming young offenders rather than incarcerating them.
However, there has been a recent backlash. In recent years, there has been a surge in alleged child killings, which has attracted widespread attention. Many Chinese have called on the country to take tougher measures. The government has responded. Xinyue’s murder is one of the first cases to go to trial since the government lowered the age at which children can be charged with murder and other serious crimes from 14 to 12.
Several incidents this year have reignited the debate. In January, police in central China dropped charges against a boy accused of pushing a 4-year-old girl into a cesspool, killing her, because he was under the age of 12, too old to be prosecuted. Chinese media reportsIn March, police said three 13-year-old boys near Handan, also in central China, dug a grave in an abandoned greenhouse, took a classmate there and killed him. The boys were charged shortly afterwards.
Hashtags related to the Handan shooting on Chinese social media Within a day, the post was read more than 1 billion times, with legal scholars and ordinary social media users calling for severe punishment of the offender, even the death penalty. Some argue that young people are more willing to commit crimes because they know they will not be punished by law. A criminal law professor with more than 30 million followers on Chinese social media accused those who try to exempt minors from punishment of “moral relativism.”
But others point to factors that can lead children to crime, such as parental neglect or poverty. Many in China worry that poor rural children — defendants in some of the most high-profile cases — are being abandoned as the price of economic development. Many of these children are known as “left-behind children” because their parents leave them at home while they travel far away in search of better jobs.
As public pressure mounted, the Supreme People’s Court issued a New Guidelines Preventing juvenile delinquency, including potentially holding guardians accountable for their children’s actions.
it is also Announce The court recently sentenced four children aged 12 to 14 to 10 to 15 years in prison, the first time it has ever tried children of that age. The court said the children had committed unspecified violent crimes and said it wanted to show “tolerance without condoning.”
Mr. Gong said Xinyue was a gentle child who liked to watch the cartoon “Paw Patrol” and eat mangoes and strawberries. On September 25, 2022, Xinyue’s grandparents were taking care of her while Mr. Gong, a single father who worked in construction, was on a construction site more than 100 miles away. That afternoon, Mr. Gong’s father called to say Xinyue was missing.
Mr. Gong quickly ran back to the village, which was a poor village with about 40 households. Located in terraced corn and potato fields in Gansu Province. When he arrived, Xinyue’s body had been found.
Police arrested a 13-year-old neighbor. According to the indictment provided by Mr. Gong, the boy “developed a hatred for women” because he was “dissatisfied with his mother’s way of discipline.” The indictment cited physical evidence, witness testimony and the boy’s confession that the boy placed a knife in the woods, then took Xinyue there and stabbed her in the neck. Mr. Gong said he had seen the boy but was not familiar with him.
It was not clear whether the boy had ever contacted a lawyer. The indictment said he was being held in a local prison. Rights activists accuse Chinese officials of sometimes extracting confessions under pressure. Local police and courts declined to comment.
Reporters tried to contact the boy’s parents several times but were unsuccessful. Red Star NewsThe report said the newspaper interviewed Gong’s mother, Ms. Chen. Ms. Chen did not reveal whether she thought her son killed Xinyue, but she apologized to Gong and expressed her willingness to provide compensation to Gong’s family.
Ms. Chen also said that her son had been bullied and once was forced to eat feces by his classmates. She admitted that she had beaten her son because of his academic problems.
After the boy was arrested, Mr. Gong thought the case would be resolved quickly. But for more than a year, the procuratorate has not prosecuted the boy. Given the wide variety of crimes punishable by death in China, Mr. Gong also expected that he would be sentenced to death. He was furious when he learned that the law prohibits the execution of minors.
The law claims to protect minors, he said. But “are the children we lost protected?”
China has long been considered relatively progressive in juvenile justice. Some Western countriesexplain Shen Anqiprofessor of law at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. International conventions recommend 12 as the minimum age for prosecution. China set the minimum age at 14 in the 1970s. (In the United States, the minimum age of criminal responsibility varies by state, and most states do not have a minimum age.)
Especially in recent years, Beijing has encouraged prosecutors to divert juvenile offenders to educational programs or community service. Global Research exhibit That Incarcerating young offenders does little to reduce recidivism rates: Between 2008 and 2022, juvenile convictions fell by nearly 70 percent.
But alternatives to prison are riddled with holes. Juvenile detention facilities and reform schools are often overseen by police rather than specially trained staff, and parents can choose not to send their children there.
Officials aren’t even sure what to do with children under 14. In 2018, police said a 12-year-old boy killed his mother. Allowed to return to school for a few days Later, police said they had no choice because they could not press charges.
Public outrage over the case prompted the government to Lowering the age Zhang Jing, consultant to the China Association for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, said in Beijing that my country will lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 by 2021.
It is not clear whether juvenile crime rates are actually rising. Announce China sentenced 12,000 minors to prison in the first three months of 2024, up nearly 80% from a year earlier. But experts say that may reflect changes in officials’ decisions to prosecute rather than an actual increase in juvenile crime. China does not publish arrest statistics. Social media also helps amplify individual cases.
The debate over punishment has to some extent overshadowed the discussion about prevention — specifically how to help so-called left-behind children suspected of certain crimes.
The study found that left-behind children (about 70 million worldwide) are more likely to Being bullied or AbusePart of the reason is that they may not receive adequate supervision or care. The three suspects in the Handan case were left at home, as were the victims, according to state media.
In response, many Chinese have urged parents to return to the countryside to raise their children, or suggested that parents should take responsibility if their children cannot return home.
But Professor Zhang in Beijing said those calls ignored the root cause of the separation of parents from their children. China prohibits most children from attending schools outside their hometowns, making it difficult for workers to bring their children.
“It’s useless to punish parents. Wouldn’t it be better to change the parents’ environment?” Professor Zhang said, calling for more resources for rehabilitation and prevention, such as police officers specially trained to deal with juveniles.
Mr Gong, who himself often travels away for weeks or even months because there are few job opportunities in his village, acknowledged the difficult choices many parents face.
“Who doesn’t want a better life for their kids or their family?” he said. “But everyone has to do it in their own way.”
For now, Mr Gong has been staying near his home, doing some part-time work, awaiting trial.
Xinyue was buried in the woods where she died. Mr. Gong cut down the poplar trees and planted cherry and peach trees in their place. He imagined Xinyue reborn and eating the fruits of these trees.
Li You and Zhao Siyi Contributed to research.
