Official neglect of orphans a tragedy

In November, five boys who were all related and ranged in age from nine to 13, died in a trash bin in Bijie, Guizhou province, after they apparently started a charcoal fire to keep warm and succumbed to carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Understandably, the tragedy caused a nationwide uproar, highlighting the heart-wrenching plight of so-called left-behind children. Their parents, seeking jobs in the bigger cities, had left them in the care of relatives at home.

On Friday, seven children, all aged four or five, perished in a fire at an unlicensed private orphanage near Kaifeng, Henan province. Again, the tragedy touched a raw nerve in the nation, but this time it highlighted the even more terrible predicament of orphans.

Initially, the online outrage was directed at the orphanage's owner Yuan Lihai, who was widely known in the poor county of Lankao for sheltering abandoned children, particularly those with disabilities, in her dilapidated home near a public hospital.

But it soon became clear that Yuan, 48, was a Good Samaritan. Since 1986, the street vendor had adopted more than 100 abandoned children and had 18 in her care at the time of fire, 16 of them handicapped or sick.

Local officials have admitted that Yuan was not considered qualified to look after abandoned children, but they tacitly allowed it and even sent abandoned infants to her, as the county did not have a welfare home for children.

After the fire, local officials moved the surviving children to government-run shelters in Lankao and Kaifeng. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the fire, but the authorities are expected, quite predictably, to fire a number of local officials so they take the blame and soothe public anger, just as they did in Bijie. Let's hope that will not be the end, as it appears to have been in the earlier case.