The number of left-behind children under five years old in rural areas has reached 23 million in China, said an official from Women's Federation (WF) Wednesday.

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Left-behind children are those whose parents are migrant workers and working in urban areas away from homes.

The under-five group accounts for 40.19 percent of the total number of left-behind children in China, the official added at a seminar on children's early development on November 15 and 16.

Provinces of Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and Guangdong each have more than one million under-five left-behind children, a growing social issue that WF hopes to curb.

Lack of guardianship, nutrition and most importantly family love, all lead to life-long harm to a child's psychology, the official said.