China Turns Filial Piety into Law

The Chinese government recently enacted a law aimed atcompelling adult children to visit their elderly parents.

The “Protection of the Rights and Interests of ElderlyPeople” contains nine clauses laying out the duties of children to tend to the“spiritual needs of the elderly.”  Thelisted duties include visiting parents at home “often,” occasionally sendingthem greetings, and a duty companies have to give employees enough time off forparental visits.  The law stipulates nopunishments for those who neglect their parents.  However, on the day this law went into effect, a Wuxi court ordered a young couple to visit the wife’s elderly mother, who had sued the couple for neglect.

As a consequence of Chinese urbanization, the absence of children from the parents’ lives is a real issue, with many young people moving to the cities and leaving their parents behind in villages.

See Edward Wong, A Chinese Virtue Is Now the Law, The NewYork Times, July 2, 2013.