Abstract: Child protection has drawn the academic and social attention. From the Child Abuse Case in Nanjing, the practical dilemmas in the child protection practice demonstrate the multiple tensions. The first one is ambiguous definition between the child abuse and physical punishment in the cultural construction of child abuse. The second is the gap between judicial justice and social functional recovery. The third tension is the rights conflicts between the different subjects and the child, and the collisions within the multiple aspects of the children rights. On such basis, the paper proposes to intensify institutional innovation of child protection to cope with the practical dilemmas in intervening child abuse. Firstly, improve the common definition of child abuse and make the public acknowledge it as a social problem. Secondly, on the macro level of child protection system, keep the balance of the rights among the state, parents and the children, and advocate the child welfare policy to support children's families; on the micro level, integrate child abuse intervention system to incorporate child protection and family service, increase the families' function of supporting children. Lastly, the social work's participation and cooperation of social work and judicial sectors should be introduced.

Key words: child protection, child abuse, children's rights, child welfare policy