Bystanders’ Neglect of Injured Toddler Sets Off Soul-Searching on Web Sites in China
By MICHAEL WINES
BEIJING — Last Thursday, a van navigating the narrow streets of a hardware market in Foshan, in the southern province of Guangdong, struck and ran over a 2-year-old girl. The driver paused, then drove away. A surveillance camera showed that the toddler lay grievously injured for seven minutes, ignored by at least 18 passers-by, while a second vehicle ran over the child and drove on. A 57-year-old rag collector finally went to her aid.
The next day an apparently suicidal woman jumped into a lake in Hangzhou, a city southwest of Shanghai, and began flailing helplessly. A woman widely reported to be an American threw off her coat, swam the 65 feet to the drowning woman and expertly hauled her to shore. And then, seeing she was safe, the rescuer left without giving her name.
Neither episode is necessarily representative: many Chinese do help those in dire straits, and, obviously, Americans do not always come to the rescue. But thousands of microbloggers in China have used the juxtaposition of callousness and heroism to fuel a wrenching debate over whether people in their country lack compassion and, if so, why.
It is the sort of national conversation, increasingly common now, that did not exist before in a land where the printed press and broadcast media largely remain controlled by a Communist Party more interested in directing public opinion than in reflecting on the national mood. “What kind of nation is this?” asked one microblogger who called himself Patton Yu. “It doesn’t matter if an individual’s nature is good or bad, it’s the system that has made us deteriorate.”
Said one commentator about the Hangzhou rescue: “Yesterday Obama [chatted] with out-of-work construction workers. Today, I see a story about an American tourist jumping into the water to save someone. I finally realized why America is such a strong country and will continue to be one.”
By Tuesday, more than 9.3 million people had posted comments on the toddler’s accident. Chinese reports on Monday quoted doctors as saying that if the child survived, she was likely to remain in a vegetative state for the remainder of her life. Far fewer commented on the Hangzhou rescue — in the scores of thousands — but those who did raised the same ethical concerns about going — or not going — to the aid of a fellow Chinese.
In an unscientific online survey conducted by the Web site ifeng.com some 170,000 respondents, who voted on their own initiative, judged by a wide margin that the toddler’s case was proof that the Chinese people’s morals and mutual trust were eroding under the pressures of modern society.
Yet the question of compassion in Chinese society is not a new one. In 1894, an American missionary, Arthur H. Smith, wrote an influential book, “Chinese Characteristics,” in which a chapter, “The Absence of Sympathy,” raised similar questions.
“Unwillingness to give help to others, unless there is some special reason for doing so, is a trait that runs through Chinese social relations in multifold manifestations,” he wrote.
Mr. Smith offered only anecdotes to back his beliefs. But some current observers in China say his views carry an element of truth, albeit for different reasons.
More than a few blame the state of Chinese law, which they contend is too subject to judges’ whims and hidden influences, for making people afraid to help their neighbors.
Most cite the widely publicized case of Peng Yu, a Nanjing resident who in 2006 stopped to help a 65-year-old woman who had fallen, only to be accused by the woman of causing her fall. A court ruled for the woman, using the logic that Mr. Peng would never have assisted her had he not been responsible for the fall in the first place. The decision angered many Chinese, but it also may have made them more reluctant to act in others’ behalf.
Unlike some Western nations, China has no “good Samaritan” laws that protect people who render emergency aid from prosecution.
Some also cite what they say is a skewed legal code that actively discourages good Samaritans. News accounts of the Foshan case quoted one driver who hit the toddler as saying, “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan,” or about $2,135. “But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands of yuan.”
While the account could not be independently verified, tapes of the driver’s phone call to a journalist are widespread on the Web. (Chinese news reports say that the drivers of both vehicles that struck the child have been arrested, but offered no details.)
Dai Qing, a Beijing journalist and social activist, said the cases of the toddler and the near drowning raised two issues: “The first one is that China’s law has proved again and again that it cannot protect justice. The second issue is a vacuum of beliefs.”
She added: “All the traditional values of Chinese society were thrown out the window to make way for Mao and the rest of the party leadership. But that died long ago, and there was nothing to replace it except a materialistic hunger.”
In truth, everyone has empathy for his fellow citizens, said Lynn Hunt, a U.C.L.A. historian whose 2007 book, “Inventing Human Rights: A History,” charts the West’s development of the concept. But whereas a Westerner might stress an individual’s ability to change the world with one good deed, the Chinese worldview might center more on the duty to protect family members and close friends.
Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing lawyer frequently involved in civil rights cases, recited the tale of a neighbor who recently fell on a concrete floor and whose pleas for help were ignored by bystanders.
“The law is supposed to be the bottom line of a society,” he said. “Anything above that line is not about the law. Above the bottom line, China does not have any guideline for social behavior. There is no religion or faith. There are no role models.”
That is one theory. But many Chinese clearly do care: just as Americans were stirred to national outrage in 1964 after news reports (since disputed) said that dozens of New Yorkers ignored the cries of a young woman, Kitty Genovese, who was being stabbed to death, Chinese microblogs are filled with outrage over the toddler’s fate.
“We do not want to be Chinese bystanders,” wrote one commentator. “Who you are makes who China is; how you are makes how China is. If you are bright, then China is not in the dark; but if you are indifferent, then China will be.”
Edy Yin and Mia Li contributed research.