A three-year-old girl was beaten to death on November 14 by her mother, who then dumped the body in the sea near Xiamen in Fujian Province. Four days later in Jiangsu Province, a primary teacher threw an eight-year-old boy from the fourth floor of a building. Miraculously, the boy survived.

Kirsten Di Martino, child rights chief of UNICEF in China at Forum on Child Welfare and Child Protection delivers a speech at One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute, Beijing Normal University. [Pierre Chen / China.org.cn]

These two child abuse cases were widely reported because the assailants had set out to kill their victims, and in one case succeeded. But abuse cases in which the child is merely injured often go unreported.

Although China has laws in place to protect vulnerable children and minors, in many parts of the country, particularly poorer areas, children's rights are still not taken seriously.

Rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation measures have improved child welfare in China over the past three decades. But social changes brought about by economic growth have also resulted in new challenges for child protection.

Changes in family structure, urbanization, and massive internal migration have exposed children to new risks and dangers that child protection laws drafted a decade ago could not foresee.

"Children in China are exposed to unsafe migration, lack of parental care, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking and other forms of exploitation, violence and abuse," says Kirsten Di Martino, child rights chief of UNICEF in China at Forum on Child Welfare and Child Protection at One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute, Beijing Normal University.