Legislation required

"In China, child sexual abuse is banned in law, but involve vague definitions and punishments," said Tong Lihua, the director of Beijing's Legal Aid and Research Center for the Underaged.

Tong has been dedicated to legal protection work for minors for years. And his call for building an effective legislative mechanism comes at a time when a number of high profile child sexual abuse scandals have been exposed over the past couple of years. 

"If there are no clear-cut penalties for child abuse crimes, such scandals will continue to increase. And children will suffer more mentally than physically from mistreatment," said Tong.

In addition, many lawyers proposed to establish an effective mechanism to prevent perpetrators from working as teachers in primary schools and publicize their identities to alert society. They said good progress has been made in piloting such proposals in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, and these are expected to be extended to other areas of the country shortly.

Zhang Xuemei, the deputy director of the Committee on Protection of Minors, of the All China Lawyers Association, confirmed that huge progress has been achieved in exploring effective measures to prevent children from sexual abuse.

"It's one small step towards a better legal protection for the minors, and I hope there will be more," Zhang added.