Weekly News
The Seven Year Old Delivery Boy
This week a video from the website PEAR VIDEO has gone viral in China. The video has amassed over 18 million views, with most being in China, at the time that I am writing this and has sparked a discussion on social media about child poverty and child labour.
The video shows a 7 year old boy nicknamed "little li" who carries out his work delivering packages alone in China. Obviously as we live in a first world country where child labour has been banned for decades this kind of work for such a young child immediately rings alarm bells for us here in England however this is horrifyingly common around the world. In fact child exploitation of this nature was everywhere in England during the industrial revolution. Entire factories would have all the labour done by children as young as 5. Even when looking at statistics for England we see that almost a quarter of all children in the UK live in poverty so although its easy for us to criticise this situation perhaps more should also be done at home. It's unsurprising that child labour is seen in countries like China as they are currently in their industrial revolution with much need for cheap labour. To me it seems ridiculous that we are so blind to this issue that even us living in a country that once had child labour can be so surprised by this case
This is not an isolated case. In fact over 200 million children are being exploited with work around the world. There are laws against this kind of thing in China but they are rarely enforced. Local authorities have agreed to look into this case however to me its clear that this is only happening to try to subdue the media storm.
A fundraising page has been created for the young boy which is all well and good however I think this further highlights how blind people are to the scale of this issue. With so many children living in similar situations I think that this money would be much better used to help as many children as possible rather than to all be spent on one child who got lucky enough to be noticed.
Some of the worst countries for child labour include Afghanistan, Nigeria, India and there are even high rates in Russia. These children become lost in the crowd and have to work to survive. Many extreme cases in India see homeless children being kidnapped and mutilated in order for them to beg for money only to give it all back to the gangs who kidnapped them. This issue was highlighted in the recent film Lion.
This is not an isolated case. In fact over 200 million children are being exploited with work around the world. There are laws against this kind of thing in China but they are rarely enforced. Local authorities have agreed to look into this case however to me its clear that this is only happening to try to subdue the media storm.
A fundraising page has been created for the young boy which is all well and good however I think this further highlights how blind people are to the scale of this issue. With so many children living in similar situations I think that this money would be much better used to help as many children as possible rather than to all be spent on one child who got lucky enough to be noticed.
Some of the worst countries for child labour include Afghanistan, Nigeria, India and there are even high rates in Russia. These children become lost in the crowd and have to work to survive. Many extreme cases in India see homeless children being kidnapped and mutilated in order for them to beg for money only to give it all back to the gangs who kidnapped them. This issue was highlighted in the recent film Lion.
However as the BBC reports this video has caused a social media outcry especially within China. Its clear that the BBC believes strongly in a free press as the article comments on how "China's state-run media often attempts to control discussions about certain social issues".
Although the BBC seems to disapprove of this level of control it isn't much different here. We have the appearance of a free press yet it is pretty much all biased. It is true that unlike China there are multiple opinions other than "agree with the government" however with most news coming from ITN there is very little variation in the news.
Although the BBC seems to disapprove of this level of control it isn't much different here. We have the appearance of a free press yet it is pretty much all biased. It is true that unlike China there are multiple opinions other than "agree with the government" however with most news coming from ITN there is very little variation in the news.
As one might expect this issue has remained largely uncovered by right-wing news outlets such as SKY and The Daily Racist.
Comments
Post a Comment