Keeping children out of harm's way

I am dedicating this column to Yuan Hai. Name not familiar to you? Yuan was 17 and one of the first firefighters who died at the Tianjin blasts last week. He was also the youngest to die. We'll never know quite what happened that night, but I think of him as a very brave boy.

Which is exactly my point. What was a boy of 17 doing in the front line of a chemical explosion? There are numerous questions to be asked about the tragedy, and Premier Li Keqiang among others seems determined to get answers.

Children have always been exploited, but we can put laws in place to stop proper institutions from doing so.