A summer film aimed at teenagers that explores the fate of “left behind children”, one of China’s current social concerns, has been cancelled at the last minute, prompting fears it has been censored.
No reason has been given for the removal of Wild Child from the national cinema schedules for next week, the start of the Chinese school holidays, other than “post-production issues”. The film was also being marketed with the English title Stand by Me.
It tells the story of two young boys who meet on the streets, bond, and get by using petty theft. One is an orphan, and the other has been forgotten by his family — a classic “left behind child”.
“We would like to express sincere apologies to our friends in cinema and to the audiences,” a statement said, saying there would be refunds for tickets already bought but giving no indication that the film might be shown later.
The themes of the film reflected concerns in the country, as it grapples with some unintended consequences of its rapid economic growth. One driver has been the shift of tens of millions of workers from inland provinces to the booming industrial zones of the east coast, where many employees live in cramped dormitory accommodation with no room for children.
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The country’s strict residence controls have also meant migrant workers are often not allowed to send children to school in their new home towns. Many have as a result been left behind with grandparents, but as they become teenagers — and their carers older — they are at greater risk of isolation or of joining gangs. A number of murders committed by teenagers in the last two years has caused outrage and a lowering of the age of criminal responsibility.
A study last year for Unicef, the United Nations children’s organisation, found 108 million children in the country — over a third of the total — were not living with both parents. That represents an increase of 30 million on a decade earlier, a time when concerns were already growing about the social effects.
More than 71 million children had migrated to live with one or both parents, according to the study, but almost 67 million had been “left behind”.
Two recent criminal cases have highlighted what many fear to be the consequences. In March, three teenage boys were arrested for bullying, killing and burying their 13-year-old schoolmate. All four were said to be children of migrant workers.
Last week, a 13-year-old boy went on trial for stabbing an eight-year-old girl, Gong Xinyue, to death in the northwestern and relatively impoverished province of Gansu. Her father, Gong Junli, has staged a public campaign following his daughter’s death, a rare event in China where criminal cases regularly go unreported until a culprit is found, prosecuted and sentenced.
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Gong Junli lived and worked on a construction site 100 miles away from his home village, where Xinyue was under the care of her grandparents.
He has argued for reforms to China’s laws regarding children accused of crimes, which unlike much of the country’s penal code are liberal compared with many western countries, with a focus on rehabilitation and “re-education” rather than punishment.
The age of criminal responsibility has only recently been lowered from 14 to 12, in response to another case, where a 13-year-old boy could not be charged with a murder and was allowed to return to school.
The boy accused of killing Xinyue, who has not been named, is among the first to be charged under the new age limit, still higher than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where it is ten. In Scotland it is 12, while the UN still recommends 14 as appropriate.
Wild Child is believed to have been gentler in approach, showing the protagonists in a similar light to those in popular movies like Slumdog Millionaire, with a message of resilience and friendship in tough circumstances rather than brutality.
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It is directed by Yin Ruoxin, who is part of a group of up-and-coming women directors whose frank but warm-hearted depictions of young people’s dilemmas in a changing society have reinvigorated China’s film industry. Her film My Sister, about a young woman torn between forging an independent life and bringing up her younger half-brother after their parents’ death in a car accident, was a surprise success in 2021.
Even so, Wild Child appears to have been too “negative” for the tighter restrictions on the discussion of public affairs, even relatively uncontroversial ones, seen under President Xi.
The film was also due to be released shortly before a key event in the Communist Party calendar, the third plenum, or conference, of the Party Central committee, which begins on July 15. This year’s plenum is regarded as having particular significance, with President Xi under some pressure over an economic downturn and muttered concerns about his having failed to nominate a successor. It has been delayed for several months without explanation, often a sign of disputes in the top leadership.
The man believed to be Xi’s closest ally, Cai Qi, the fifth-ranked member of the politburo standing committee, has responsibility for organising the plenum but also for overseeing all issues to do with propaganda, including censorship.
According to Radio Free Asia, a US-backed news service, Cai decided Wild Child had a “negative mentality towards the current reality” and did not “conform to the main theme of encouraging young people and teenagers to be positive and forward-looking”.
