Official media and Communist officials admit "big mistakes" were made in the case of the five boys who died in Bijie. The authorities however detain the journalist who first reported the tragedy. The five boys died a few hours Xi Jinping's inauguration speech in which he said "Our people have an ardent love for life" and want a better future for their children, this in a country where 58 million children lack appropriate supervision.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - As ordinary Chinese mourn the death of five boys who died from carbon monoxide poisoning after seeking shelter in a rubbish container, the journalist who reported the story was detained. It did not matter that the media and public officials in Bijie (southwestern province of Guizhou) had admitted that "big mistakes" had been made in the case; police still arrested Li Yuanlong, a dissident former journalist who broke the tragic story.

On 15 November, a sanitation worker found the boys' bodies inside a rubbish container. Ranging in age from 9 to 13, they died a few hours after Xi Jinping delivered his speech as new leader of the Communist Party and the country. "Our people have an ardent love for life," Xi said in the address. "They want their children to have sound growth, have good jobs and lead a more enjoyable life."

According to the autopsy report, the boys died from carbon monoxide poisoning after they lit a fire to keep warm against the cold outside. Temperatures were about 4 degrees Celsius.

The boys, Zhongjin, Zhonghong, Zhonglin, Chong and Bo, were all brothers or cousins. They were the sons of three brothers-two of whom are migrant workers with jobs far from home-and most of them lived largely unsupervised in the care of their blind grandmother.

Questions have been raised about how the children-found about 25 kilometres from their home village of Caqiangyan-could have gone missing for 10 days without more of an effort launched to find them. The family reported the boys missing on 5 November. Beijing lawyer Li Fangping said the failure of local officials to launch a proper search was "horrific".

Six local officials, including two school principals, were sacked on Tuesday over the negligence. The town's mayor and the local Communist party chief were not.

"We have failed in our management work," said a spokesman for Bijie city. "Our work was not attentive enough."

State media outlets, giving the deaths broad coverage, bashed local officials. "This is a shame that cannot be washed away by a civilised society," the Beijing Youth Daily wrote in an editorial.

Xinhua, China's official news agency blamed the nation's school system for putting too much stress on academic excellence at the expense of caring for less successful students.

"Please do not forget the mission of compulsory education. Please spread love and responsibility like sunshine," Xinhua wrote in an editorial. "This is also a tragedy of 'left-behind children,' which is a sign of the time and requires introspection from family, society and government."

However, after an initial burst of coverage in national state media, government censors by Tuesday had ordered outlets to play down the tragedy and not send any reporters to the town where the bodies had been found, the China Digital Times wrote.

In any event, "An estimated 58 million children countrywide lack sufficient supervision [. . .] when their parents seek work in China's booming cities," the South China Morning Post reported. Sadly, such a tragedy continues in the name of economic growth.

• china
• bijie
• boys
• rubbish
• container
• death
• communist
• party