Chinese province Guangdong clamps down on school bullies with tougher penalties
- Guangdong education authorities take aim at specific behaviours, giving schools 10 days to handle complaints
While Hong Kong has topped a global list for schoolyard bullying, neighbouring Guangdong province is coming down hard on the practice, with punishments ranging from school detention and expulsion to criminal liability.
The penalties are part of provincial regulations drafted by Guangdong’s Department of Education and due to come into effect on December 1, about a year after the release of a national plan to tackle school bullying.
The regulations, which will remain in place for three years, target specific behaviours and classify bullying into three levels of severity.
Name calling, destruction of petty property, insulting or slandering people on social media and insulting a person’s character are the least serious offences while punching, kicking, slapping, tripping or hair pulling, forcibly removing clothing and extortion fall into the middle category.
The most severe cases involve repeat offenders, the use of knives or other weapons to threaten or assault a victim, and the uploading of photos or videos of other people being bullied.
Bullies who have reached the age of criminal responsibility will have to bear the full legal consequences of their behaviour. Under Chinese criminal law, 14 is the minimum age for criminal responsibility for violent crimes such as murder, assault or rape.