Nearly 100 million rural Chinese children's parents work in cities, according to a special report released by the All-China Women's Federation on May 9.

The report, titled Research Report on Rural Left-Behind Children and Migrant Children, said that the number of "left-behind" children cared for by elderly relatives in the countryside hit 61.02 million as of 2010, accounting for 37.7 percent of rural children and 21.88 percent of the country's child population. The figure was 2.42 million more than that in 2005.

The number of migrant children, which refers to children migrating with their parents to other places, neared 36 million in 2010, an increase of 41 percent compared with 2005, according to the report.