Teaching Consent
The concerning rise in juvenile sexual bullying and sexual crimes sounds the alarm about the inadequate state of sex education in China’s schools and the reluctance to go beyond basic information
On September 16, 2023, a severe incident of sexual assault and bullying at Dacheng Bilingual School, a primary school in Datong, North China’s Shanxi Province shocked the entire country. According to media reports, two 9-year-old boys abused, beat and sexually assaulted a 10-year-old boy, who had been their room-mate for 18 months. The father of the victim posted a statement online, accusing the two boys of abusing, sexually bullying and raping his son. The graphic details included of the assault appalled the public, especially as it involved boys of such a young age.
According to a white paper issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in June 2023, two alarming trends concerning juvenile delinquency require significant attention. First, there has been a noticeable increase in the juvenile crime rate – the number of suspects aged 14 to 16 has risen from 5,259 in 2020 to 8,710 in 2022. Second, in 2022, 36,957 minors were charged with rape and sexual assault, an increase of 20.4 percent from a year earlier.
In the Datong case, the school arranged a meeting between the parents of the three, and the two abusers confessed what they had done. Their parents wrote apology statements and expressed willingness to bear the medical examination expenses.
The public security bureau criticized the two boys, requesting both to attend psychological counseling and behavioral correction. Their parents were also criticized and asked to apologize to the victim and his guardians. The school principal was fired, as were the deputy principal and the boys’ teachers.
The lack of sex education, as many experts emphasized, is the key reason behind the increase in juvenile sex crimes. Worse still, with the widespread use of smartphones and the popularity of short videos, livestreaming and social media, children and teenagers are being exposed to a wide range of online pornography. This poses a significant challenge for educators.
‘Let Pornography Teach’
“Wiener-grabbing” – in which boys try to grab each other’s genitals – has become a popular game in primary schools in China, many teachers have observed.
Zhang Xiao, who teaches psychology at a primary school in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, told Newschina that several years ago, this type of “horseplay” rarely occurred. But it has become very common in the last two years. She is worried, as sometimes, the game turned violent.
Many teachers and parents perceive it as innocent play driven by children’s curiosity. However, Hu Zhen cautioned
that children and teenagers engaging in such sexual acts are exhibiting a lack of fundamental respect for each other’s bodies, and identifies this as a contributing factor to the alarming increase in juvenile sex crimes.
“As far as I know, sexual bullying is increasingly common at primary and secondary schools, though most of it isn’t as cruel as the Datong incident,” Hu said.
As an educational psychology professor at Chengdu University and chief expert of the Adolescent Sex Education Popularization Center of Sichuan Province, Hu has been involved in adolescent sex education for the last two decades.
According to Hu, many teachers and parents tend to overlook the sexual aspects of certain school bullying incidents. This avoidance stems from adults’ discomfort or shame about sex. In contrast, children naturally possess a curiosity about sex when they are young.
“‘Wiener-grabbing’ and the Datong incident are essentially the same. If teachers and parents fail to properly guide children from the aspect of sex education in time, this horseplay will very likely evolve into sexual bullying eventually,” Hu told Newschina.
Severe sexual bullying can escalate into sex crimes. According to statistics provided by the Youth Detention Center of Chengdu, since 2018, the rate of sex crimes has surpassed other criminal behaviors such as intentional homicide, intentional injury, robbery and drug dealing, making it the most prevalent offense among minors. In June 2022, 33.6 percent of minors detained in the center were sex offenders. The figure rose to 39 percent by March 2023. Alarmingly, the percentage skyrocketed from 8 percent in 2012 to 39 percent in 2023, with a growth rate of 387 percent in merely a decade.
While the center did not provide an explanation for the trend, increased awareness of what constitutes a sex crime may have contributed to a rise in reported offenses. Also, increased exposure to online pornography and other sexualized content may be to blame for the increase.
Due to the absence of proper sex education from schools and families, children and teens might turn to online sources or other ways to access sexual content. A 2022 report on underage internet users by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows the rate of internet usage among Chinese minors aged 10 to 16 increased from 25 percent in 2012 to 99.9 percent in 2022. According to another report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2018, about 10 percent of children under 5 had already accessed the internet, and 33 percent of underage internet users had been exposed to online pornography.
“Particularly during the three-year pandemic period when primary school students attended classes online, they were subjected to even more pornographic material on the internet [as they spent more time online, often without parental supervision]. Pornographic memes sprouted like mushrooms and they would spread among young kids in less than a week,” Zhang Xiao told Newschina.
In 2018, a short surveillance video went viral online, in which a young boy in Longyan, Fujian Province, forcibly kissed a girl of the same age inside an elevator, even though she tried to resist. His forced kiss lasted until the elevator door opened and she ran away.
“This video reflects how misguided minors’ attitudes towards sex have become,” Hu told our reporter. “The boy equated violence with bravery. He took it for granted that when he liked a girl, it was acceptable to forcibly kiss her and corner her. He also regarded the girl’s resistance as effective acquiescence, or even encouragement,” Hu said.
She added that in many Chinese
romance movies, TV series and popular fiction, the male love interest is usually portrayed as wealthy and of high social status but domineering and controlling. This “bossy lover” archetype in Chinese pop culture has had a significant influence, leading to misguided notions of “forcible love and sex” among children and teens.
Li Yanhong, a former project officer at UNESCO’S office in China, has dedicated years to advocating for youth sex education and school bullying prevention. Li told Newschina that if educators avoid talking about sex and fail to provide minors with proper guidance on understanding love and sex from a healthy perspective, they are “letting the pornography play the teaching role.”
Li points out that wherever a sexual bullying incident occurs at school, the public tends to shift focus from the core problem. “The bullies, to some extent, are also ‘victims.’ We can’t just condemn individual juvenile offenders. More importantly, we should focus on the institutional challenges behind the cases – the crux of the Datong sex bullying incident is that Chinese children and teens are in desperate need of proper sex education,” Li stressed.
Absent from Class
While Chinese society no longer treats sex as a taboo in public discourse as it did decades ago, conservative and outdated views persist when it comes to sex education for children and teens.
In 1987, Wu Jieping, vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, points out in an essay that many Chinese adults believe that knowledge about sex can be acquired naturally without the need for explicit education. Moreover, another prevailing opinion is that the earlier teens know about sex, the more likely they are to engage in sexual behavior.
Hu Zhen argues that even today, the majority of society still holds these opinions. Many parents and teachers who oppose sex education still fear that it will awaken desires in innocent children and teens.
These deeply ingrained attitudes hinder the development of sex education. As of June 2021, the concept of “sex education” had not been clearly mentioned in any official document issued by Chinese educational authorities.
For a long time, most schools in China did not offer a dedicated sex education course for students. Instead, related topics, particularly those concerning puberty, would be scattered throughout courses such as physical education, health, psychology, science, biology, morality and law. These topics were often taught by teachers without any specific background in sex education.
The shortage of professional sex education teachers is another challenge. Gou Ping, a psychology professor at
Chengdu University and director of the Adolescent Sex Education Popularization Center of Sichuan Province, points out that a qualified sex education teacher should possess interdisciplinary knowledge encompassing fields including sexuality, anthropology, sociology, anatomy, medicine and psychology. Moreover, an ideal sex education teacher should be open-minded, tolerant and willing to discuss sex-related issues with teens without bias or stereotypes. These qualities require professional training.
As of 2010, only Chengdu University offers a sex education program as part of a teaching degree. The number of graduates remains relatively small. “Since there are no dedicated positions for sex education teachers in primary or junior high schools in China, training a large number of professionals seems pointless,” said Yang Rong, a Chinese teacher at Wenchuan No.1 Primary School in Sichuan Province, who has been promoting sex education for years.
On June 1, 2021, China for the first time included “sex education” in the Law on the Protection of Minors. The revision explicitly requires kindergartens and schools to provide age-appropriate sex education.
Although a positive step, two years have passed with no substantial progress. “Everyone says the spring of sex education has come. But I still can’t feel the slightest touch of a spring wind,” Yang Rong told our reporter.
Tang Kun, an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s Vanke School of Public Health, told Newschina that although the law has been enacted, the lack of implementation policies makes it difficult for educational institutions to put the ideas into practice.
“Sex education involves a comprehensive and complex course system. Generations of Chinese have grown up in an environment devoid of sex education. It’s unrealistic to expect teachers and parents to fully understand how to teach kids and teens about sex,” said Tang, who is also co-chair of the World Health Organization Advisory Group for Adolescent Health Metrics.
From Gou Ping’s perspective, if sex education continues to rely solely on the efforts of civil organizations, it will remain in a pilot stage and scattered among a few schools, unless authorities mandate compulsory classes.
One key problem she encounters when promoting sex education in schools in Sichuan Province is the inconsistent attitudes of school administrators. A sex education class is likely to be canceled if there is a change in principal.
“We often say that ‘there would be no difficulty if the principal doesn’t say ‘no,’” Gou said, highlighting that after all these years, very few schools have consistent sex education programs.
Evolving Values
A study by Beijing Normal University examined and summarized 82 research papers on China’s sex education issued from 2000 and 2019. The study found that most of the existing sex education programs in schools focus on physiological aspects of sex, such as puberty development, reproductive health and HIV prevention. Such content fails to address contemporary teenagers’ growing curiosity and need for knowledge about love, healthy relationships, gender traits and sexual orientation.
In response to this gap, Zhang Yaohua, director of an education charity organization in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, launched the “Niwo Mates” project in 2016, which provides sex education courses for children and teens aged 6 to 18. The courses have been taught in 3,500 primary and secondary schools to more than 3.5 million students.
Zhang Yaohua told Newschina that today, questions about sexual orientation and gender traits concern teenage students most, such as “Am I homosexual?” and “Is it normal that I have a thing for a same-sex friend?” However, many teachers in China consider these questions “abnormal, wrong and something not to bother with.”
Zhang Xiao has also observed this change. She said that a decade earlier, most students had very limited knowledge of sex. They wanted to know how they were born, and girls had questions about menstruation. Today, teenagers’ knowledge of sex has expanded beyond physiological health, with many already aware of the details of sexual behaviors.
She argues that while this phenomenon is inevitable as society develops, it has occurred earlier in China than was expected. “Many teachers prefer to ignore it and gloss over changes in the students’ attitudes. It’s because they can’t accept the changes themselves. It’s closely related to their own sexual values and morals,” Zhang told Newschina.
As the public becomes more aware of juvenile sex assault cases, parents and teachers recognize the importance of sex education. But experts have voiced concerns that sex education is being narrowed down to “sexual assault prevention.”
Li Hongyan stressed that solely focusing on sexual assault prevention may not be effective and could even have adverse effects. Overemphasizing protection may mislead minors’ perception of sexual behaviors and reduce sex education to “abstinence education.”
“Teaching children to say ‘no’ to certain offensive sexual behaviors is not enough. When a child feels uncomfortable about certain acts, it’s still not easy for them to say ‘no.’ It seems easy to articulate this word, but in fact, to clearly say ‘no’ is based on one’s clear understanding of self – self-esteem, self-rights and self-awareness, and also a clear understanding of boundaries.
If they are being harassed, children must trust their feelings and never doubt or negate themselves. Teaching children to avoid perpetrating certain sexual assault behaviors is far from enough,” Li stressed.
Hu Zhen explained that although teenagers’ knowledge about sex has expanded, their sexual values and morality have not improved accordingly. For instance, many teens do not understand the importance of “respect” when it comes to sex.
“A core value of a healthy sex education is ‘every individual’s body should be respected,’” she said, adding that establishing ethical and unbiased sexual values and attitudes is crucial for future educators in helping students develop a healthy understanding of sex.