No more chains for Jingdan: Poverty-stricken Chinese father who shackled his son given three years free childcare

By Peter Simpson

The plight of two-year- old Jingdan has moved a local nursery boss in Beijing who has offered to give him three years of free child care.

'The nursery fees will be paid by me, which amounts to about 40,000 yuan (£3,725),' said the president of the Aibei Kindergarten, a man known as Mr Pi.

Relief: Two-year-old Jingdan embraces his father Chen Chuanliu outside the Huaguan shopping mall in Beijing earlier this week. Chuanliu was chaining his son to a pole while he went to work after his four-year-old daughter went missing

Mr Pi stepped in after seeing the harrowing photos of Jingdan padlocked to a lamppost in the Chinese capital, Beijing, earlier this week.

The image was so appalling that it was beamed around the world, a poignant reminder of the desperate lengths that parents will go to to protect their children.

For, Chuanliu explained, he had chained his son up not out of cruelty, but out of fear.

Jinghong's parents believe she was abducted on the streets of Beijing. They were too poor to afford a photograph of her, and so the police have nothing to go on but a description of the child by her parents.

And poverty prevented them from being able to protect their remaining child.

The picture that went around the world: This image of Jingdan chained to the pole sparked a wave of international sympathy for the family's plight

What little money Chuanliu earns goes on rent, food and health care, which is expensive despite the hospitals being state-owned in Communist China.

There’s also the country’s obsession with legal paperwork, which makes nursery care for the children of migrant workers a universal problem in China.  

'The biggest problem for Jingdan now is that he does not have a Beijing hukou, the  permanent Beijing residence document,' explained Mr Pi.

'According to China's laws, the boy and his family have no rights to free health or education and other social security benefits because they are from out of town.'

It feels hopeless. And Chuanliu was determined his son would not disappear like his daughter did.

Unable to afford childcare and unable to leave Jingdan with his mother, he had no choice but to take him to work, he said.

Given a chance: Now Jingdan will attend the local kindergarten for three years

It was in an effort to keep Jingdan safe from being kidnapped like his sister that Chuanliu chained him to the pole.

Now, however, the family has been given a fighting chance.

'I just want to show Jingdan and his family some compassion,' Mr Pi said. 'I never thought about this being an act of so-called social responsibility.'

Chuanliu has gratefully accepted - and, hopefully, Jingdan will never be in chains again, once the red tape is negotiated.

Embarrassed by the shocking photos being beamed around the world, local government officials say they will try and bend the rules for Jingdan, if only to hold up the central Government’s drive for an 'harmonious society'.

The gap between rich and poor is growing in China and unscrupulous criminals go to extraordinary lengths to illicit money by kidnapping children and demanding a ransom from anguished parents.

Children are also sold as slave labour. 

And despite outrage of the 2007 brick kiln slave scandal,  which saw 500 children and mentally handicapped adults kidnapped and sold into slavery, such evil trades continue in China.    

Hopefully Jingdan's family's luck is turning. Now they are praying they will be able to secure the same freedom for their missing four-year-old daughter Jinghong.

Jingdan’s dad said: 'I am eager to send the Jingdan to the kindergarten if we are allowed to.

'But we now want to find our  daughter.'