Authorities in Shanghai have arrested a kindergarten teacher on suspicion of child molestation, according to the city’s Qingpu District education bureau.

The head of the kindergarten has also been dismissed, according to the notice published Wednesday. Prior to the arrest, netizens had posted on social media about a male teacher at Qingpu Experimental Kindergarten who was allegedly molesting his young students.

In August 2017, another district of Shanghai announced that sex offenders would be subject to five-year bans from education or any other sector involving contact with minors — a policy touted as the first of its kind in China. In January, a teacher working at an after-school training center in the northeastern Jilin province was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and served with a five-year teaching ban after sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl.

In February 2019, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced a five-year plan to “establish and improve a database of sexual crimes against minors.” According to a June report by the Procuratorate’s official newspaper, many cities including Shanghai and Guangzhou have established their own local databases. (Image: VCG)