Promotion of the Cognition of Child Abuse by Media Information in Mainland China

During past several thousand of years, the term 'child abuse' was not popular in China. Most parents was not familiar with the term child abuse and there is no legal definition on it. They did not even agree that child abuse exists in China. Beating or scolding one's child is only known as a kind of strict parenting way. The main reason to have this cognition is of course the traditional Chinese culture. And this unclear cognition of child abuse has impeded the development of child protection and child right work in Mainland China. However, it is information technology that has changed or improved Chinese parents' cognition on child abuse in recent years. The significant way is media report or heated discussion on the internet. This research collected recent five years data about child abuse reported by media and analyzed the data. The result is that the media have made an important contribution to the construction of the cognition on child abuse and the information technology benefits the promotion to protect child and child's rights in Mainland China.