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 BEIJING — Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, ordered officials across the country on Friday to avert the kind of events that led to the deaths of four children who drank pesticide this week, possibly to kill themselves, in an impoverished corner of the southwest. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The youths, three sisters and a brother between the ages of 5 and 13, were among the many “left-behind children” in China. Their father was a migrant worker who sought jobs elsewhere and had been away from home for long periods of time, while their mother had also been absent for some reason in recent years. The siblings lived in a house in Guizhou Province, one of the poorest areas in China; their village, Cizhu, is under the administration of the city of Bijie. 
 
 Because of a strict household registration system in China, many people cannot receive meaningful social benefits if they live and work outside their hometowns. So migrant workers often leave their children behind to be raised by grandparents or other relatives, because the children are not eligible for proper schooling and health care in other cities. 
 
 An initial police investigation explored the possibility that the children had committed suicide, according to state news media reports. At 11 p.m. on Tuesday, someone found the boy, 13, lying in front of his three-story home, according to a report in China Youth Daily. About 20 minutes later, local officials and health workers arrived and discovered that the boy was dying. His sisters, ages 5, 8 and 9, were nearby. The girls were brought to a hospital, but they died there. 
 
 The brief official news reports on Mr. Li’s orders had few details and did not mention when or where he had given them. The report by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said that Mr. Li had mentioned there would be “strict punishments and severe consequences” if officials were found to be delinquent in taking care of the needy. 
 
 A district government under Bijie City announced online on Friday that two lower-level officials had been dismissed from their posts and that three others had been suspended and were under investigation. The report also said six other people would be punished after the investigation was concluded. 
 
 The China Youth Daily article said that some villagers had considered the four children introverted and had noted that the parents were often absent or would fight with each other when they were home together. 
 
 One villager, Pan Ling, told the newspaper that the children’s father, Zhang Fangqi, began working in other places in China years ago. The mother left home in 2013, Mr. Pan said. She came back to visit the children last year, and the father was home over the Lunar New Year holiday in February. But he left again two weeks after the end of the holiday to seek work, the paper reported. 
 
 On Friday, Guizhou Province published a report online that said the family had lived for years in Hainan, another southern province, before moving back to Bijie in 2011. While in Hainan, the father, Mr. Zhang, and his wife, Ren Xifen, beat the children, the report said. The beatings by the father were so brutal that the arm of the son, Zhang Qigang, was dislocated on one occasion, and his ears were torn, the report said. After the couple moved back, Mr. Zhang regularly beat Ms. Ren, and she ended up in the hospital at least once, the report said. 
 
 When the couple left Bijie separately, the boy took care of his three sisters and the family’s pigs. Local officials and other villagers said the family was more prosperous than others in the area. The parents had saved some money from government benefits, and their home was worth about $16,000, the official report said. But one relative told The Paper, an investigative news organization, that the family had no money and that the children had to grind corn to eat the flour because they were so poor. 
 
 After 2013, when both parents left Bijie, the four children’s personalities changed, the report said. They would stay in their home with the door locked and not open it even when relatives tried visiting, the report said. 
 
 Mr. Zhang and Ms. Ren could not be reached for comment on Friday. 
 
 In November 2012, five boys died in a trash bin in Bijie after they sought shelter there from the cold. They had started a fire with charcoal inside to warm themselves and died from carbon monoxide poisoning. ||||| Police investigating the deaths of four Chinese children who drank pesticide after being abandoned by their migrant worker parents say they have found a suicide note near the eldest victim’s body. 
 
 
 
 “Thanks for your kindness. I know you mean well for us, but we should go now,” the note said, according to the state-run China News Service. 
 
 The four siblings, a boy and three girls aged five to 14, were found dead on Tuesday at their home in a rural village outside the city of Bijie in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces. 
 
 Initial reports suggested they had poisoned themselves after their parents abandoned them and left the village to find work elsewhere. 
 
 There are an estimated 60 million “left behind” children in China, who are often put into the care of elderly relatives or unsupervised when their parents migrate to the cities looking for work. 
 
 The mother of the four children returned to the village on Friday from Guangdong province, China’s manufacturing heartland, where she had been working in a toy factory. 
 
 “I did not shoulder my responsibility for them,” Ren Xifen, 32, told China’s official Xinhua news agency, after arriving home to see her children’s bodies before their cremation. 
 
 “I have truly failed them,” she added, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper. “How I wish I could go with them.” 
 
 Ren admitted she had left them behind in early 2014 after a dispute with her husband involving domestic violence. “I didn’t dare not go home,” she said. 
 
 In March this year, the siblings found themselves completely alone after their father also left the village. “I am illiterate and cannot even write my own name. I wanted them to perform well in school, unlike me, living a hard life,” Ren said. 
 
 State-controlled media outlets have sought to downplay the government’s possible responsibility for the tragedy, but at least two local officials have been sacked. 
 
 Facing public outrage over the deaths, China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, was forced to step in on Friday to promise an urgent inquiry. “Such a tragedy cannot be allowed to happen again,” he said. 
 
 Investigating officers have determined it was a mass suicide, Xinhua reported on Saturday, citing the letter police said they had found at the children’s home. Liu Xin, a senior police officer, told the China News Service his team had used handwriting analysis to determine that the couple’s 14-year-old son had written the note. 
 
 “I made a vow that I wouldn’t live over the age of 15,” the note said, according to the news agency. “I’m 14 now. I dream about death, and yet that dream never comes true. Today it must finally come true.” 
 
 Chinese bloggers reacted to claims about the existence of a suicide note with suspicion. “It is still uncertain whether there is a note or whether its contents have been tampered with,” Xu Xin, a law professor from the Beijing Institute of Technology, wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalent to Twitter. 
 
 The deaths are the second tragedy involving “left behind” children in Bijie in recent years. In 2012, five young boys from the same area died after lighting a fire in a dustbin inside which they had taken shelter from the cold. 
 
 Additional reporting by Luna Lin ||||| GUIYANG, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Friday marked a grim, tear-filled reunion for Ren Xifen and her four children, who died last week after drinking pesticide in southwest China's Guizhou province. 
 
 Ren, 32, returned to her hometown of Cizhu village in Qixingguan District, Bijie City, to visit the bodies of her children on Friday, after working and living in south China's Guangdong province for more than a year. 
 
 Her children, aged 5 to 13, died after swallowing pesticide on Tuesday in their home in Bijie, one of the poorest areas in the mountainous province. The police determined it was a mass suicide. The bodies were cremated on Friday. 
 
 Ren admits she made only one phone call to her husband and children shortly after arriving in Guangdong in March 2014. Since then, she has not contacted the children. 
 
 "I did not shoulder my responsibility for them. I had to come back for a final look at them," Ren said in an interview with Xinhua on Friday. 
 
 "If there were one more chance, I would have made proper arrangements for them at any cost." 
 
 A government employee who accompanied Ren to the visitation said she had been weeping most of the day. 
 
 Ren left home to work at a toy plant in Guangdong after a long and bitter dispute with her husband Zhang Fangqi. Zhang moved away from the village in March this year, leaving the children behind. 
 
 Local officials have been searching for him in Guangdong following the children's deaths. 
 
 Ren said she had high expectations for her only son, the oldest of the siblings. 
 
 "He was very lovable. Everyone liked him," Ren recalled, describing him as diligent. 
 
 "I am illiterate and cannot even write my own name. I wanted them to perform well in school, unlike me, living a hard life." 
 
 But the frequent quarrels between Ren and her husband disrupted family life. Ren said she had not returned to see the children for fear of being beaten by her husband, although she missed them very much. 
 
 While investigating the deaths, police found a note from the son which read "thanks for your kindness, but it is time for us to go..." 
 
 China has more than 60 million children in rural areas who are left to live with relatives, usually grandparents, as the country's urbanization drive draws millions of parents away from their rural homes to cities for work. 
 
 It has become such a common occurrence that they are now referred to as "left-behind children". 
 
 In the case of Ren's family, no grandparents were still alive to watch the children, so they were left to fend for themselves, receiving money remitted from the father to a bank account entrusted to the oldest child. 
 
 Such arrangements are not uncommon. According to a 2013 report released by the All-China Women's Federation, nearly 3.4 percent of all left-behind children live alone, often falling victims to tragedies such as suicide and human traffickers. 
 
 "I hope my family's tragedy will not occur again. If parents take care of their children and guide them, such tragedies will not happen," Ren said. 
 
 In 2012, five street children - also from Bijie - died of carbon monoxide poisoning after burning charcoal for warmth in a roadside dumpster. 
 
 The unfortunate incident reflects the lack of adequate parental care and social services for thousands of left-behind children. 
 
 Following the news of the most recent deaths, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has urged strengthened supervision on relevant affairs, calling on government departments responsible to do solid and meticulous work in caring for those in need. 
 
 Li said such tragedies should not happen over and over again, and negligent officials should be held accountable. 
 
 Several local officials have been fired or suspended because of the latest tragedy.
– Four children who fatally drank pesticide last week in China were apparently abandoned by their parents, and investigators now report they found a suicide note near the body of the oldest child, per the Guardian. The youngsters, whose ages ranged from 5 to 13 or 14, were said to have been distraught after their parents left them in their rural home in one of China's poorest provinces, while they sought work in urban areas. "I dream about death, and yet that dream never comes true," China News Service says the note read, per the Guardian. "Today it must finally come true." Meanwhile, China Premier Li Keqiang has demanded an inquiry, proclaiming "such a tragedy cannot be allowed to happen again." The Guardian notes there are about 60 million of these "left behind" children in China, abandoned when their parents leave them with relatives or on their own so they can find work in cities. The New York Times points out China's rigid social-benefits system, which prevents children from receiving certain benefits, like health care and schooling, if they live outside their hometowns. In the case of these four children, their mother was said to be working in a toy factory in Guangdong province and had been afraid to come home for at least a year due to past domestic violence incidents, per both the Guardian and Xinhua; the Times cites a government report that says the kids were beaten by both parents, and that the father also "regularly" beat the mother. The father left the family home in March to find work elsewhere, the Guardian notes. The children's mother came back to see her children's bodies before they were cremated Friday and told Xinhua that "I did not shoulder my responsibility for them," adding to the China Youth Daily newspaper that "I have truly failed them. How I wish I could go with them."