The three Chinese students who were sentenced by a Los Angeles court for kidnapping and torturing a female Chinese student is being felt in mainland China. Chinese educators are now talking about the need for more protection for Chinese students from school bullying.
Besides serving their 6, 10 and 13 years prison terms, Zhang Xinlei, Yang Yuhan and Zhai Yunyao, respectively, would also be deported back to China after serving time. The repatriation was part of a plea bargain the three reached with local prosecutors on Tuesday, reports Qiaobao, a Chinese-language newspaper in the U.S.
The three abducted the victim in March at Rowland Heights, an affluent community in LA with a predominant Asian population. For five hours, they beat her, stripped her naked, burned her nipples with lit cigarettes and forced her to eat sand, reports AsiaOne. The crime was triggered by jealousy of one of the female defendants.
Tong Xiaojun, dean of the Research Institute of Children and Adolescents of China Youth University for Political Sciences, said on Thursday that adolescent physiological and psychological conditions explains school bullying.
While pinpointing the cause to teen's troubled years, Tong says it does not mean the problem should be ignored, rather, "it should be addressed by more caring by parents and schools, and the protection of children and adolescents should be emphasized," quotes Globaltimes.
For Jiang Jie, a lawyer based in Beijing, what is lacking in China's educational system, which explains why bullying persists, are social ethics and related laws. He adds that there is also a need to improve household education because many school children are the only child - because of China's one-child policy - resulting in the youth becoming self-centered because he or she is spoiled by the parents and grandparents.