This is Roundtable.
Ninety -three cities, hundreds of millions of children.
China has a bold vision for child -friendly cities, but with challenges ahead, can we build the cities our kids deserve?
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Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Young. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Xun in the studio, first on today's show.
A child -friendly city is more than just colorful parks and playgrounds.
It's about creating spaces where kids are heard, feel safe and free to explore.
With 93 cities, and that's about one -third of all cities in China at the prefecture level or higher, taking on this new challenge, how do we ensure every city becomes a safe haven for children?
So Yu Xun, let's go to you first.
Tell us what's going on.
Yeah, so it starts from this report.
It was published. The China child -friendly cities development report, which was published by the National Development and Reform Commission and National Working Committee on Children and Women under State Council.
So this report revealed that as of now, 93 cities across the country have been included under the construction of child -friendly cities, covering 31 provinces, regions and municipalities.
So we can see more and more places are paying attention to formulating and implementing related social policies and improving related public services like building up infrastructures for the purposes of creating an environment that is friendly to children.
It's an odd term, isn't it?
Child -friendly city, because if you don't know what it's all about, my first impression was, oh, is this a city with a lot of playgrounds or parks or extra zoos or theme parks?
What is it? But it's not about that at all.
The background behind a child -friendly city, let's talk about that.
This is from unicef .org and in 1989, that's when world leaders, they made a historic commitment to the world's children.
That's when they adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that's an international agreement on childhood.
And what that's done is it's inspired governments to change laws and policies, also make investments so that more children finally get healthcare, they also get the nutrition that they need to survive and to develop, and that there are stronger safeguards in place to protect kids from violence and exploitation.
And it's also enabled more kids to have their voices heard and participate in society as well.
And now, fast forward to 2024, let's get into the definition of child -friendly cities.
Yes, as you said, when I was thinking of the idea of child -friendly cities, the word that comes to my mind is Zootopia.
Maybe that could be like designing different sizes of doors or ways of transportation systems for different sizes of people.
I thought you were going to say rabbits and slops.
Yes, and all the buildings are pink and green and blue.
Obviously, it's not like that.
In practice, it is kind of a city, town or community in which the voices, needs, priorities, and rights of children are an integral part of public policies, programs, and decisions.
So a child -friendly city refers mainly to a city that provides suitable conditions, environments, and services for children's growth and development, and also ensuring their rights to survival, development, protection, and participation.
Yes, and also broadly speaking, there could be many aspects that a child -friendly city could cover.
But it depends whether you want to go that route or not.
Yeah, when you're talking about what they're doing at a government level, they're creating a network that brings together government and then the stakeholders like civil society organizations and the private sector and academia and media.
And more importantly, and most importantly, perhaps, children themselves who want to make their cities and their communities more child -friendly.
I saw a story from, because I was looking up, this is a new term for me, child -friendly city, even though it's been around for a while.
And I was looking up whether Canada has child -friendly cities, and we do, and whether America does, and I can go into a bit of the background on that later if you want.
But the story that I found was from Australia, and I thought that this was so cute.
What they did was they had this competition for children.
It was launched following UNICEF Australia's inaugural Better World Youth Summit.
And what they did was they asked kids to create a city or a community that was good for their physical and mental well -being.
And again, it was a competition, and the most creative entries could have won up to $3 ,000 in cash.
They had a range of other prizes as well.
And the kids were given the opportunity to write their ideas.
And also in some classrooms, they were given Lego blocks or different toys that they could use to design different things around the city.
So I thought that was a really cool thing to do.
And again, it's about hearing the voices of the kids.
Yes, and we've seen that if we look at this in maybe broader brushes, one could argue that when a city has great access to quality social services, that's really good for children.
And when children can live in a safe, secure, and clean environment with access to green spaces, for example.
And there are all these different metrics that one could add to this concept of child -friendly cities.
Yes, and one of the most important, the most important one, actually, is to have a fair chance in life regardless of their ethnic origin or their religion or their income or their gender or their ability.
And that's the statement.
That's the government policy statement.
Right. So we've got all of this on paper.
And in the books, what it's supposed to be, then let's take a look at the situation of Chinese children, because everything or anything, when you put into the Chinese context, often it is astounding numbers when you take a closer look at it.
Yeah, as we can see, according to a recent report by People's Daily, China is a country with a large population of children.
At present, there are about 300 million children aged 0 to 17, accounting for about one -fifth of the total population of the country and one -eighth of the world's child population.
Yeah, can we just stop and look at that statistic for a second?
You know, I'm new to China, relatively new.
It's been about half a year now.
And still, when I hear the statistic 1 .4 billion people, I still can't really wrap my mind around what that means, because here in Beijing, when you've got a population where you've got a population of what, around 21 million, roughly.
In my experience, when you go out in the streets around Beijing, you don't really feel that population of 21 million.
It still feels quite well spaced out.
But 300 million people, 300 million children aged 0 to 17.
I don't know the exact population of Canada.
I think it's around 35 million.
But if you took all the Canadians and took them out of the country 10 times, then that is the population in China for the age group 0 to 17.
That is a staggering number for that age group.
And also, we can see that is how it is not a problem or the thing that we need to pay attention to, because creating a space for a thumb or creating a space that is suitable for a thumb is something that we really need to do right now.
So according to an early report by China Youth Daily, a 2023 report by the state council showed that over 30 % of families with children under three have the need of child daycare nursery service.
However, restricted by multiple factors, including the current industry development stage and service prices, only less than 8 % of the families enjoy the service.
That is showing that there is huge gap or a huge space.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's about 22%, right?
30 % of families with children under three need it, but only under 8%, as you mentioned, they enjoy those services.
Right. And that is actually, I think, a headache for at least parents in China as well as in the US, for example, because childcare can be expensive.
And here is essentially what we're talking about.
Because it's expensive, it's a private service that you have to pay for.
It's not covered by the government.
And this is one of the many examples or the sore points for potential families to maybe even want to have kids, because, you know, there's a lot of this financial time and, you know, just major burden.
Maybe you can say it's a sweet burden, but it's a real one that families need to shoulder if they want to have kids.
Yeah, it's a cost that needs to be considered as well.
And the support, the support definitely should be there, needs to be there.
OK, so that's one of the many examples or many reasons why building a child -friendly city can be really useful for families.
But I want to ask you guys, because, OK, as someone who doesn't have a kid, but has been a kid most of her life, as she feels, do we really need this?
You know, why construct a child -friendly city when you can say, OK, let's construct a disabled person's friendly city or a female friendly city or, you know, pick whatever vulnerable, vulnerable group in society?
But why children? You know, there is an example, I think, that can maybe answer a question.
I remember that because, you know, there was an elementary school downstairs from my home and the surrounding roads naturally became the main routes for children going to school.
Right. So I saw a notice that read, your child, my child are all our child or our children.
This also reflects that, you know, the idea that the construction of the entire community and its facilities is a significant project that serves the whole generation.
So it's not only about like one or two people or just one communities of kids.
It is creating an idea for creating a better or suitable environment for this generation of children.
Yeah, I mean, it's the next generation of people.
Right. So I think you brought up a good point, Hyung, but I'm going to disagree with you because I don't think it's about excluding specific groups.
It's including everyone, right?
Everybody in that age group who qualifies as a child.
And it's more about the actions or perhaps the inactions that government takes or doesn't take that impact children more strongly than any other group in society.
If you're talking about government policy for education or public health, will those affect children to some degree at the moment, but they affect children as they continue to age and enter into the education field or into their school days.
So if governments or policies are being put in place worldwide that fail to take children into account, well, that's going to have a negative impact on those children and their future, thereby having a negative impact on everyone's future.
And I think that's why this is important.
Yeah. And the benefits of a child friendly city, I do agree with you guys in the sense that it goes beyond just the children themselves.
When cities are designed with children's needs at the center, it could lead to healthier, happier communities, safer streets, better public health, more green spaces and greater social cohesion.
And that could all make for a stronger, more sustainable urban environments for everyone.
And also when reading through some of the theoretical works in this area, what I find to be really interesting is that one scholar made the point that building, well, ideally speaking, the children friendly cities, is that it could equip families and cities to better correspond and accommodate to the rapidly
changing societies.
Because, well, we're going to talk about AI coming up in less than 20 minutes and with so many technological changes.
And for example, Chinese families becoming smaller and smaller and grandparents might not be able all the time to be there to support these nuclear families and child care and other purposes.
And society is just changing rapidly.
And then there are a lot of things that are on families for them to adopt.
And if you can have a society, a city that's got more of these social services that can help you to adopt, then ideally speaking, I know I'm speaking of, you know, if everything runs perfectly, almost in a perfect world, but it could be a really good thing.
And I also want to ask you guys, China isn't like flipping on a switch to go from zero to, oh, children friendly of cities overnight.
We've done many things to get here.
So tell us how far we've gone.
Oh, yeah. So as we can see, it's not like a new thing to China, a national level policy to build 100 such cities.
Liu Ming, who is the director of the social development department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that in 2021, the construction of child friendly cities was included in our work plan or a five five year plan in the same year with the approval of the state council, 23 departments,
including the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued this kind of guidance, you know, officially starting China's construction of child friendly cities.
And also, according to this opinion or this guidance, China will launch pilot child friendly city schemes in approximately 100 cities nationwide by 2025.
The progress we can see is ongoing since the construction of the first batch of 14 child friendly cities was announced in 2022.
An additional 40 and 39 cities were added in respectively, 2023 and 2024.
Yeah. So that's a total of 93 cities right now across the country.
And again, you know, just comparing to Canada, I don't even think we have 93 cities in our country.
And 93 isn't even a large piece of the pie in China either, right?
It's only sorry, just to quickly offer a footnote, that's nearly one third of the Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above.
So we're still talking about the more advanced, bigger cities, certainly.
And there, there are still plenty of smaller cities that probably need to sort of wait and see and maybe join this action later on.
Yeah. And by the end of 2023, there were over 130 cities, including urban areas of municipalities directly under the central government that have formulated implementation plans and action plans for their construction of child friendly cities.
So it's obviously, yeah, it's not new here in China at all, but it's what's been done so far is great.
And we can see that it's going to continue to grow too.
And that's very good news.
And we're, we've seen many of these child friendly places or spaces being built during these recent years.
Could you give us some of those examples?
Oh, yes. So Hefei is in Anhui Province, it's in the eastern China.
It has equipped over 60 newly built kindergartens with child friendly facilities, such as parent waiting areas, small playgrounds and public toilets.
And also in Qingdao in Shandong Province, which is in northern China, it has designed and launched 10 child friendly libraries with an annual reception of about 500 ,000 children readers, creating a public welfare picture book library open to children in the city for free.
And that is the point that I would like to mention, because we know that China is constructing a lot of like public and free libraries for all of the citizens.
And one, you know, maybe some of them will have, maybe not.
But that it is quite important that we have a special sector or section for that is designed for children, because, you know, when you're like sitting down or you have a seat, different designs will actually help children to have a better reading experience.
And that is quite important.
Yeah. And that's an indoor activity.
Yes. And here's an example of an outdoor activity.
Suzhou. Am I pronouncing that correctly in Jiangsu Province?
Yes. 40 parks, five venues and blocks carried out child friendly renovation in 119 different schools and surrounding transportation.
So indoor activities, libraries, fantastic outdoor activities and spaces for kids to be able to play and have fun also.
Yeah, absolutely. And also something that just quickly comes to mind is, you know, just making so many of these public facilities more mom and children friendly, and also maybe dad and children friendly.
And in recent years, we've heard so much about building these gender, well, not gender neutral, family oriented bathrooms in, well, in nice shopping malls everywhere in Beijing.
At least you see these family friendly restrooms where the mom or dad could easily change the diapers for the baby.
And it's so spacious and well lit and nice and with places to put your personal belongings in and take as long as you want.
I think that's really great.
And those are things that maybe, you know, you and I might not even notice if we're out and about, but there are people, especially people with young children, they obviously notice those types of things, particularly when they are not there, right?
That's when they notice the most.
And the fact that they are there just makes things more comfortable and more convenient for families.
Right. And also, I think one point is that we've discussed so many like infrastructures and facilities.
I think one aspect that you mentioned before is that we're not only creating these facilities, but also letting kids heard.
So that is also one part that we need to pay attention to because children's view are, you know, rarely heard and rarely considered in the political process.
But children without special attention to the opinions of children, as you know, they expressed at home and in schools, in local communities, and even in governments, children's views go unheard on the, you know, many important issues that affect them now or will affect them in the future.
Because I can see a lot of, you know, videos that's about children on video platforms.
We can imagine that, you know, like five -year -old kid, they cannot have a lot of opinions, but actually they have their own ideas, even their own opinions on a lot of things.
And maybe creating a space for them to speak out.
And maybe that is the best, maybe design for them themselves.
When I was in high school, I remember the local government had budgetary issues and they were talking about how they were going to, out of necessity, put special needs children into the other classrooms, combining the two into one.
And our school requested a special meeting with the government officials about this.
And the students spoke up.
And I remember this meeting very clearly because I remember that the number one most popular opinion from the students speaking to the government council at that time was this.
We are concerned that the students are not going to get the attention that they require.
And the kids weren't talking about themselves.
They were talking about the special needs kids.
They were saying they are not going to get the attention that they deserve and that they require.
And this is going to be, this isn't going to be good for them.
And the reason that stood out to me so much is because the kids weren't thinking from a selfish point of view, Oh, now I'm not going to get as much attention from the teacher.
Not at all. So when you ask young people, their opinions, and you're right, I think you should, and it's true in many places around the world, young people don't often get their voices heard.
But when you ask, then you can get some answers that might surprise you and might even give you as adults even better ideas on how to make a stronger community.
I think you're onto something fundamental here.
And I think it only also points to a major obstacle to the development or the better development of child friendly cities.
That is, in general, there is a lack of understanding of the real needs of children.
Especially if you don't have a system, a process that is open for suggestion in a really smooth and easy way, then sometimes the government could be very well intentioned.
And maybe through some hard deliberation might even have a solid budget to be devoted to this cause.
But how can you come up with designs and ways of implementation that truly addresses the needs, the real needs of children.
And I think there's just so much work that could be done in that area.
But also today, when we're talking about this discussion, it's potentially showing that in China, that maybe we've passed the phase of throwing trillions of yuan into infrastructure projects.
And that could be an important part of pulling the economy up.
But we need to talk about how to use that money in a smarter way and to really benefit those in need.
And as we look into the future, the idea of child friendly cities is not just a trend, but it could be a fundamental shift in how we view urban development.
By prioritizing the needs of children, we're investing in a society where empathy, equality and sustainability aren't just ideals, but they're built into the very fabric of our cities.
And it's clear that the true measure of a city's success will be how well it nurtures its most vulnerable citizens.
