Recently, a rich doctor from South China's Hainan Medical University (HMU) was suspended after it became public that he had refused to support his ailing mother.

On Friday, China seemed to take a step towards addressing the increasing problem of grown-up children neglecting their parents by amending a law, which will now require them to visit their parents often, reports said.

If they don't, the amended law says that the parents will now have the right to sue their sons and daughters. The number of visits was not specified.

In July, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, reviewed an amendment to China's Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly for the first time.

The amendment added an item that asks sons and daughters to go home often to see their aging family members.

According to a state-run Xinhua report, the government needs to do more work in moral education, especially in a graying China where filial piety is disappearing and senior citizens face lots of psychological problems.

Local media frequently carries stories mentioning cases of parents being criminally neglected by their adult children.