Wider social welfare and heavier penalties can help end child labor

A 14-YEAR-OLD CHILD IN FOSHAN, South China's Guangdong province, died working in a local underwear factory. The local authorities fined the factory 10,000 yuan ($1,537) for employing children. But Qianjiang Evening News said on Monday that it is loopholes in the legal system that caused the tragedy:

Even though middle school textbooks repeatedly tell us that child labor is a phenomenon of the early stages of global capitalism, the fact is children are still found to work in domestic factories of the mainland.

China ratified the Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor in June 2002. Before that China had already promised that workers had to be aged at least 16. That's a promise to the hundreds of millions of domestic children as well as to the world.