Chinese child deaths not covered by The New York Times

Not long ago, the "New York Times" made a special report "The Chinese Dream Disrupted " for the three mothers and children of Dai Guihua who died in the Hunan loan fraud case. When I first read that report, I was very surprised, because in my mind, in recent years, the New York Times coverage of China has rarely covered the death of children in families with many children.

In order to verify whether my impression is accurate, I deliberately went to the New York Times website to search for several deaths of children in families with many children that had caused a great sensation in China. The result was that my impression was not completely accurate. The New York Times ” actually reported some of these cases, but some of them were indeed not reported.

Which child deaths were not reported by The New York Times?

For example, the death of 4 children in Yunnan Qiaojia in 2017 (for domestic related reports, please refer to the article "The Death of 4 Children in Yunnan by Fire: Parents Talked to the Second Son on the Phone on the Night of the Incident "), I wrote in the New York Times Searching for keywords such as “Yunnan Qiaojia” and “Children died of fires” on the website could not find the report of the newspaper.

Another example is the death of left-behind children in Bijie, Guizhou Province in 2015. I searched "Guizhou Bijie", "left-behind children" and "children drinking pesticides" on the Chinese website of The New York Times, but I could not find any relevant reports.

The same is true of the continuous deaths of children surnamed Cai in Zhejiang Tiantai in 2010.

In addition, the collapse of a quarantine hotel in Quanzhou in 2020 also involved the deaths of two families of five (both with three children). This case also did not receive the attention of the New York Times.

So, which child deaths were covered by The New York Times?

After searching, The New York Times reported on the Yang Gailan incident in Gansu in 2016 (" Gansu peasant woman committed suicide after killing four sons, and the poverty problem draws attention again "), and the 2012 Bijie 5 children in Guizhou died in the garbage bin incident (" Guizhou Five The arson case of a nanny in Blue Qianjiang, Zhejiang, which caused the death of 3 children, was also reported, but it was not reported from the perspective of the death of a child, but treated it as an ordinary criminal case. It was reported after the sentence was pronounced (" Nanny Defendant in Hangzhou Arson Case Dies at First Instance ").

Why are some not reported and some reported?

After comparing and analyzing the child deaths that The New York Times reported and did not report, I found such a pattern: The New York Times usually does not report any child deaths that cannot be extracted from the socially critical connotations of the deaths. For example, the death of children in Yunnan by roasting fire was an accident caused by the ignorance of a few children; the Bijie 4 case of children drinking pesticides, although it seems that the local officials visited these children before the incident (may frighten the children), but this It only involves the attitude of officials and cannot be further refined, so for The New York Times, it seems that there is no need to report it; the incident in Zhejiang Tiantai is also the same, it was just an accident, and it is impossible to blame these things on society or the government. , not reported.

Conversely, those reported by The New York Times usually distill socially critical connotations. For example, from the Yang Gailan incident, we can extract the problem of poverty at the bottom; from the garbage bins of children in Guizhou, we can extract the problem of left-behind children; from the arson case of the nanny in Hangzhou, we can extract the “related issues of greed, trust, inequality, and social neglect”. "And other issues.

However, do those cases not reported by The New York Times really fail to extract any social criticism?

In fact, from the death of 4 children in Yunnan, to the suicide of 4 children in Bijie by drinking pesticides, to the accidental death of many children surnamed Cai in Zhejiang Tiantai (4 of the 5 drowning children were from the same family), we can extract One connotation: Having more children does not necessarily bring more security to these families . This applies to poor families and wealthy middle-class families alike. Because when there are more children at home than parents can handle themselves, they inevitably need to seek help: those who have money find a nanny (as in the case of arson), those who have no money throw the child at the grandparents (as in dying in the dumpster) A few Guizhou children from the same province), or let slightly older children take care of younger children (such as the 4 brothers who died in the fire in Yunnan, and the drowning children in Tiantai, Zhejiang).

However, this connotation is contrary to the values of The New York Times as an anti-birth control media. Therefore, even if those cases caused a great sensation in the domestic public opinion field, the New York Times refused to pay attention.

On the contrary, if the deceased child is involved in the one-child or family planning policy, then the New York Times will most likely pay attention to it, and even what happens in the United States will find the one-child policy to blame, such as “ Boston makes China one more loss. Single Family ".

This may be the reason why the New York Times did not report the case until years after the death of Dai Osmanthus, mother and child: finally found a way to make Planned Parenthood responsible for their deaths.

In fact, no matter whether the deceased is an only child or a child of a multi-child family, the New York Times is not always concerned with those children. What they care about is and only the "freedom" of adults to have more children. This "freedom" "Rights" must also include the "freedom" of adults to irresponsibly and irresponsibly have children regardless of family conditions - although the word "responsibility" is clearly mentioned in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights when referring to reproductive rights, it has been passed through by anti-birth control groups. After a while, "responsibility" disappeared, but "freedom" was overemphasized.

Originally, among the "human rights" advocated by the anti-birth control group, for children, only the "birth right" of the fetus is included, and the child's "right to life" is not included.