幼儿园虐童丑闻

A teacher at a kindergarten in Guangdong has been captured on closed circuit television physically abusing a four-year-old child.

The teacher can be seen tossing and kicking the little girl to the ground.

The girl, who already had learning difficulties, is now severely brain damaged.

She has had two operations since last month, but can no longer walk or talk properly.

And in another recent case, public anger has intensified after an online video grab shows a female teacher at a kindergarten in Zhejiang dangling a little boy by his ears.

A subsequent investigation has found the teacher had been working without a license.

These stories have since gone viral, sparking heated discussion on the internet about the abuse of children at schools.

While many countries have clear-cut penalties for child abuse, the laws surrounding child abuse here in China are vague and often weak.

Currently there is no criminal law that deals specifically with child abuse.

Wang Dawei is a professor with the Chinese People's Public Security University.

"We don't have specific laws covering the abuse of children, so we have to charge suspects with existing laws. As such, the punishments may not fit the crime. It will be an improvement for China's legal system to add ammendments covering the abuse of children."

While the criminal code here in China does cover abuse within a family, outside abuse of children - such as by teachers or care-givers - only rates an administrative detention of upto 15-days.

This means they will not face criminal charges.

Professor Wang Dawei says preventing the mistreatment of children needs to be looked into more closely.

"Many factors cause these cases. We need to analyze those cases one by one to check if the teachers involved have physical or psychological problems. Is there any social reason? Are they doing this to vent their anger? We need to do this analysis, so as to find the reason and prevent the abuse from the beginning."

A number of lawyers are now suggesting this country's judiciary issue an interpretation of the current laws to expand the definition of the crime of abuse to include mistreatment outside the family.

Due to a lack of investment, the number of private, unregulated kindergartens is much higher than that of state-funded ones in many places in China.

Low wages offered by private kindergartens often lead to a shortage of qualified staff.

In Zhejiang alone, an estimated 40-percent of the roughly 100-thousand teachers in kindergartens have no teaching qualifications.

For CRI, I'm Alexandra Blucher.