For nearly two years, Gong Junli had been waiting, imagining that the killer of his eight-year-old daughter, Xinyue, would eventually be brought to justice, ever since she was found stabbed multiple times and her body dumped in a poplar forest in northwest China.

But when the defendant is also a minor, justice becomes complicated.

The police said Xinyue was killed by a boy who was only 13 at the time. The trial that began on Wednesday will try to answer a question that has troubled Chinese society: How should minors accused of heinous crimes be treated?

Countries around the world have long struggled to balance punishment and forgiveness for minors. But the debate is particularly interesting in China because its history of relative tolerance for juvenile crime stands in stark contrast to the limited rights of adult criminal defendants. For decades, the government has emphasized educating and reforming juvenile offenders rather than imprisoning them.

However, there has been a strong backlash recently. In recent years, there has been a high incidence of juvenile homicides, which has attracted widespread attention from society. Many people have called on the state to take tougher measures. The state has indeed responded. The Xinyue case is one of the first to go to trial since the government lowered the age of criminal responsibility for juvenile intentional homicide and other serious crimes from 14 to 12.

Several cases this year have reignited the debate.According to Chinese media reportsIn January, police in central China dropped a warrant for a man who pushed a four-year-old girl to death in a manure vat.The boys were charged in March after police said three 13-year-olds from nearby Handan, also in the central region, dug a grave in an abandoned greenhouse, took a classmate there and killed him.

On Chinese social media, topics related to the Handan murder and burial case attracted more than 1 billion views in one day, with legal scholars and ordinary social media users calling for severe punishment of the perpetrators, even the death penalty. Some believe that young people are more willing to commit crimes because they know they will not bear legal responsibility. A criminal law professor with more than 30 million followers on Chinese social media accused those who try to exempt minors from punishment of “moral relativism.”

But others point out that lack of parental education or poverty can also lead minors to crime. Many in China worry that poor rural minors — defendants in some of the most high-profile cases — have been abandoned as a price of economic development. Many of these minors are known as “left-behind children” — their parents leave them behind as they move away to look for better jobs.

Gong Junli said that Xinyue was an obedient child who liked to watch the cartoon “Paw Patrol” and eat mangoes and strawberries. She usually lives with her grandparents. Gong Junli, a single father who works in the construction industry, works at a construction site 100 to 200 kilometers away. The incident happened on September 25, 2022. That afternoon, Gong Junli’s father called to say that Xinyue was missing.

Gong Junli rushed back to the village, a poor community of about 40 households surrounded by corn and potato fields in Gansu province, and when he arrived, Xinyue’s body had already been found.

Police arrested a 13-year-old neighbor. The indictment provided by Gong Junli said that the boy was “dissatisfied with his mother’s education method” and “gradually developed hatred towards women.” Gong Junli had seen the boy before, but was not familiar with him. The indictment cited physical evidence, witness testimony and the boy’s confession, saying that the boy placed a knife in the woods, then took Xinyue there and stabbed her in the neck.

The boy is being held in a local jail, the indictment said, and it was not clear whether he had a lawyer. Rights activists accuse Chinese police of sometimes using torture to extract confessions. Local police and courts declined requests for comment.

Ms. Chen also said that her son had been bullied in school before and was once forced to eat feces by his classmates. She admitted that she had beaten him because he did not study well.

After the boy was arrested, Gong Junli had hoped that the case would be resolved as soon as possible. But after waiting for more than a year, the prosecutor had not prosecuted the boy. He also expected him to be sentenced to death, because the death penalty is widely applicable in China. He was angry when he learned that the death penalty was not applicable to minors.

He said the law claims to protect minors, but “are the children we lost not protected?”

But alternatives to jail are riddled with holes. Juvenile detention centers and special schools are often run by police rather than specially trained staff. Parents can choose not to send their children there.

Officials are even less sure what to do with minors under 14.In 2018, police said a 12-year-old boy killed his mother, but days later heAllowed to return to school; Police said they had no choice because no charges could be filed.

To some extent, the debate about punishment has overshadowed the discussion about prevention, particularly about how to help the so-called left-behind children involved in these crimes.

In response, many Chinese have urged parents to return to their hometowns to raise their children, while others have suggested holding parents accountable if their children are under criminal age.

But Zhang Jing in Beijing said those calls ignored the root cause of the separation of parents from their children. China prohibits most children from attending school outside their hometowns, making it difficult for parents to bring their children with them to work.

“I think punishing parents for this problem is useless. Instead of punishing parents, you might as well change their family environment, right?” Zhang said, calling for more resources for rehabilitation and prevention, such as police officers trained to deal with juvenile problems.

Gong Junli acknowledged that many parents face an impossible choice, and he himself often leaves for weeks or months at a time because there are almost no job opportunities in his village.

“As a parent, who doesn’t want to create a better life for their children or their family? Everyone does,” he said. “But he takes responsibility in his own way and method.”

Now, Gong Junli has been doing odd jobs not far from home while awaiting trial.

Xinyue was buried in the grove where she died. Gong Junli cut down the poplar trees and planted cherry and peach trees in their place. He imagined Xinyue coming back to this world and eating the fruits from the trees.