Call for criminal penalties for ‘negligent’ Chinese parents

Thirteen members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have proposed making guardians criminally responsible for negligence that results in the injury or death of a child. In raising the proposal, China Democratic League member Li You said 100,000 children were killed in accidents every year and most were the result of negligence by caregivers.

“The harm done to children due to negligence by reckless parents poses a severe social problem and deserves the attention of families, society and the relevant authorities,” Chengdu Economic Daily quoted Li as saying.

The proposal was made just days after two children – one aged five and the other two – died after falling from the fourth floor of a Tianjin shopping mall. Their father had been holding them up to a railing to get a view. In January a four-year-old boy drowned in a pool when his mother was looking at her phone in Xian, Shaanxi ­province.

Li said public sympathy tended to be with guardians and they were never held responsible for accidents to children in their care. He said a legal system should be established to hold reckless parents to account for such casualties.

League airs tax plan based on family unit

The Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League is pushing for a “fairer” taxation scheme based on household instead of individual incomes, China Youth Daily reports.

The league’s central committee said in a statement that the existing individual income tax system, which has been up and running for more than three decades, did not consider the full financial burden on a whole family or the genuine capacity of an individual to pay tax.