China orders people to visit their parents

In this photo taken on March 17, 2011, an elderly Chinese man sits alone at a park in downtown Beijing. / AP Photo/Vincent Thian

BEIJING Visit your parents. That's an order.

So says China, whose national legislature on Friday amended its law on the elderly to require that adult children visit their aged parents "often" — or risk being sued by them.

The amendment does not specify how frequently such visits should occur.

State media say the new clause will allow elderly parents who feel neglected by their children to take them to court. The move comes as reports abound of elderly parents being abandoned or ignored by their children.

A rapidly developing China is facing increasing difficulty in caring for its aging population. Three decades of market reforms have accelerated the breakup of the traditional extended family in China, and there are few affordable alternatives, such as retirement or care homes, for the elderly or others unable to live on their own.

Earlier this month, state media reported that a grandmother in her 90s in the prosperous eastern province of Jiangsu had been forced by her son to live in a pig pen for two years. News outlets frequently carry stories about other parents being abused or neglected, or of children seeking control of their elderly parents' assets without their knowledge.

The expansion of China's elderly population is being fueled both by an increase in life expectancy — from 41 to 73 over five decades — and by family planning policies that limit most families to a single child. Rapid aging poses serious threats to the country's social and economic stability, as the burden of supporting the growing number of elderly passes to a proportionately shrinking working population and the social safety net remains weak.

[jefforsythe]

This action just shows us that the Chinese Communist Party has reached a state where they can make such ridiculous laws and think they they have the right to do so. The Party has lost all touch with its own humanity since renouncing God and treating its people like garbage since they took power in 1949.
The CCP has murdered over one hundred million of its people since it took power in 1949.
The CCP, since 1999, has been attempting the genocide of tens of millions of innocent Falun Gong practitioners by the use of torture, slavery, organ harvesting and murder.
The CCP has hundreds of hidden slave camps all over Red China, where children are sleeping on cold floors, in their own feces.
The CCP recently put a young, pregnant Falun Gong practitioner in a cell with four hardened criminals and had them rape her.
The list goes on and on and none of these brutal atrocities are ever mentioned by Western Governments or media because of corporate greed. The greatest crime of all is the crime against conscience. Thank you for your consideration.

[WillowSunstar]

So what about parents who abused their children? Why should their children be forced to visit them?

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

The move comes as reports abound of elderly parents being abandoned or ignored by their children.
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If you're sorry parents, don't expect a huge return on a puny investment. Children raised by loving parents don't need to be ordered to spend time with their folks.