Earlier this year, Shanghai became the first city in China to attempt to provide free public education to the children of migrant workers. China’s estimated two hundred million migrant workers are a marginalized group of poor laborers that lacks access to social benefits (such as healthcare and education) because they do not hold a hukou, or household registration, in the cities to which they migrate. Acutely aware of the difficulties migrant workers and their families face, Premier Wen Jiabao asserted in his annual work report before the National People’s Congress in March of this year that China would “ensure” that migrant workers “receive the same treatment as urban residents” in an array of areas, including children’s education. The city of Shanghai undertook its own initiative beginning over two years ago in attempt to improve the education facilities available to migrant workers’ children. Though there has been some success in integrating migrant children into local schools, its scope remains limited and the playing field is hardly level for migrant children looking for education equal to that of their school-age counterparts in large cities.

DEVELOPMENTS

After meeting this May with Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel laureate Burmese democracy icon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell said that Myanmar's upcoming elections, if held under the 2008 constitution, would lack international legitimacy. Under this revised constitution, the military junta in Myanmar would be replaced by a civilian government, including a 440-member legislature of which 25 percent of seats will be reserved for the military. The constitutional revisions prompted some cabinet members in the junta to resign from the military and transform themselves into civilians in order to qualify for a larger proportion of seats.

The junta's control has systematically disallowed social reforms to take place, continuously denying minority communities the basic civil liberties and rights necessary to sustain their daily lives. Political struggles and armed conflicts between the military regime and political opponents such as the National League for Democracy have left nearly 3.5 million people in Myanmar stateless without access to public services or a legal claim to basic freedoms and civil and political rights.

One of the world's most persecuted minorities according to the U.N., the Rohingya people comprise an Islamic community in the North Arakan region of Myanmar that has been subject to discriminatory practices and denied basic rights, such as the rights to free movement or marriage, as well as the rights to access to medical services, food or housing.

DEVELOPMENTS

Over the last two months, a spate of violent attacks against schoolchildren in China’s eastern provinces has heightened authorities’ concerns about the instability of China’s poor and mentally ill, many of whom feel left behind as the rest of China gets wealthier.   On March 23, a retired doctor, reportedly driven by a desire to take revenge on the rich, stormed a local elementary school in the southeastern province of Fujian and stabbed eight children to death, injuring five others.  The shocking incident inspired four copycat killing sprees by unemployed or under-employed adult males, most of whom reportedly suffered from mental illness.  The killings highlight the need for a better social safety net and social welfare services for the mentally ill, and put into sharp focus the uneven nature of China's economic development and its concomitant social pressures.  Soaring income inequality, widespread perceptions of helplessness and the corrupt, self-seeking behavior of some Chinese government officials have become part of the public debate as the world seeks to understand these tragedies and China seeks to prevent future ones.