China now has 369 million children, the second largest child population in the world.[1] As in many traditional societies, the parent-child relationship is central to the Chinese culture and has been the core of child protection in China. Yet social changes created by China’s fast economic growth are drastically transforming the situation of families, and, therefore, are generating significant impacts on all aspects of childhood. The current child protection system in China, which in the past almost exclusively relied on children’s extended families and community-level social and economic organizations, is now inadequate to protect children and guarantee their welfare. Demographic changes, especially large scale migration, widening social inequality and the dismantling of community-level social and economic organisations have severely reduced the capacity of families and community-level organisations to provide adequate protection for children; and so far, the Chinese government has been unable to establish a multi-level and cross-sector system that can provide effective protection to children.

The objectives of our work in Advocating for the Rights of Children programs are to increase community members’ awareness of the rights of children, reduce abuse and neglect of children, increase the rate of children’s birth registration, raise the availability of protection and care for children, improve the capacity of the Chinese government and civil society organisations to provide policy support and programs that protect the rights of children and child protection and lastly to help children express their views to adults more effectively.

Among our Advocating for the Rights of Children programs, the Child Legal Support and Protection Project provides children with legal support and protection services; the Universal Birth Registration Campaign increases community and government agency awareness of the significance of birth registration; the Migrant Children’s Education program provides learning opportunities for disadvantaged migrant children; the High School Education for Sustainable Development Project integrates development issues into urban secondary education and Sponsorship which provides a cross-cultural learning opportunity for children and their families.