A truck laden with fireworks exploded on an elevated expressway in central China on Friday, unleashing a blast that threw vehicles 30 yards to the ground below and killing at least nine people, state news reports said.

The truck was on an expressway near Sanmenxia in Henan Province in morning fog when the truck erupted, causing an 87-yard section of the Yichang Bridge to collapse, according to the Web site of Dahe Daily, a newspaper in Henan, which quoted rescue officials at the site. Earlier, officials had raised the possibility that a bridge collapse set off the explosion.

Fireworks are a tradition of China’s traditional Lunar New Year celebrations, which begin on Feb. 9, and the explosion was a reminder of the dangers brought by the crush of people and goods on the move before the holiday.

[...]China Central Television reported that one eyewitness injured in the accident said that because of an earlier accident before the explosion, traffic had been snarled on the expressway and a number of vehicles had crashed into one another.

Initial coverage reported at least 26 were killed in the explosion and a further 15 injured, though more recent coverage claims lower numbers of casualties.

This incident highlights safety concerns surrounding the traditional use of fireworks in Spring Festival celebrations. From The Guardian:

The accident is a stark reminder of safety hazards often associated with Chinese new year celebrations, which begin this year on 10 February. 5,945 fire accidents were reported during the first day of last year’s spring festival alone, according to Xinhua.

In 2006, 367 people were killed at a temple fair in Henan when a storeroom of fireworks exploded, according to the Associated Press. Six years earlier, an explosion at an unlicensed fireworks factory killed 33 people, many of them children.

The Chinese government outlawed fireworks from 1993 to 2005, but ultimately lifted the ban under intense public pressure.

In 2010, a lunar holiday fireworks explosion caused damage and death in Guangdong province, and in 2011 state media reported two dead and 223 more injured over the holiday period in Beijing. After air pollution readings hit record levels in Beijing recently, safety is no longer the only argument for curbing the traditional celebratory use of fireworks. People’s Daily reports:

Air pollution concerns have prompted Beijing authorities to ask residents to set off fewer fireworks during the upcoming Spring Festival.

“To improve the air quality and create a favorable environment for you and your family members, please set off fewer fireworks or no fireworks, in order to reduce emissions of pollutants,” an official with the Beijing Office on Fireworks and Firecrackers said Friday.

The official said the office has closely followed Beijing’s air quality reports and issued the proposal to citizens via media.

[...]After an hours-long firework-ignition spree on the eve of the Lunar New Year in 2012, the density of PM2.5 increased sharply to hit 1,593 micrograms per cubic meter at the Chegongzhuang monitoring station, located downtown, or 1.5 times higher than the most polluted day so far this year in Beijing. ( The prolonged smog that shrouded many parts of north and east China in January sparked debate over fireworks during the Spring Festival.

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At least 10 people, including five children, died when their overloaded minibus plunged into a mountain valley in southern China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a string of such accidents which have sparked public anger.

The nine-seat vehicle was carrying 20 people when it ran off the road in Guangxi region, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Ten survived, including a three-month-old infant who was in critical condition, it added.

The deaths of 18 nursery school children in a bus crash in November last year caused a wave of fury and prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to pledge more money for rural bus services, especially for those carrying children.

Chinese state media reports aside from the ten killed, another ten have been injured, according to Xinhua:

The 10 injured are receiving treatment, including a three-month-old infant who is in critical condition, the spokesman said.

The infant’s mother, 24-year-old Wei Yuefang, said she and her family were in the minibus heading for the home village of Bahaotun in Qibainong township to attend a wedding.

She said she was carrying her sleeping daughter when the accident happened, adding that they were thrown out of the vehicle while it was falling into the valley.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

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Photographs on the government’s news website showed rescuers hauling passengers out of the 50-metre (165-feet) gorge on stretchers, some with blood on their faces, with the bus lying on its side, its windows completely smashed.

China’s roads are notoriously dangerous, with traffic laws and safety widely flouted.According to police statistics, around 70,000 people die and 300,000 more are injured in road accidents every year in China, state media have reported.

But the World Health Organisation said in a recent study the true figure was almost twice that number, citing hospital and medical clinic statistics.

According to Times Live, the bus, operated by a state-run firm, was carrying 34 passengers and running from Sanmenxia city to Jiyuan city in Henan province.

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A school bus taking primary students home slipped off a country road into an irrigation ditch in eastern China, killing 15 children and highlighting continuing safety problems in the country’s school transport system following a similar tragedy last month.

[...]The accident occurred Monday evening as the bus was traveling along a rural highway outside the city of Xuzhou in the province’s north. News reports said it careened off the road after swerving to avoid a pedicab. Xinhua said the driver had been detained for investigation.

[...]The crash comes amid an emotional national discussion over the poor condition of Chinese school buses and chronic underfunding of public schools, particularly in rural areas which have lagged far behind cities over the past three decades of rapid economic development.

An article in China Daily describes policy actions being drafted just prior to Monday’s crash aiming to prevent such accidents:

A day prior to the accident, the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council published draft regulations aimed at improving school bus safety, a move sparked by a nationwide outcry following the deaths of 19 children in an overcrowded, nine-seat bus.

[...] The draft proposed that school buses will have right of way in traffic under the command of police, the vehicles will be able to use bus lanes in rush hour, and private vehicles will be forbidden from overtaking a school bus picking up children.

It stipulates government will establish standards to test the quality of school buses, which now have to go through safety checks every six months.

While the Jiangsu case appears to have resulted in the most fatalities, it was not the only school bus crash to hit the news so far this week. Xinhua carries word of another devastating school bus crash that occurred yesterday:

Two students were killed, and more than 20 others were injured, including seven seriously, on Tuesday morning in a bus-truck collision in Zhumadian city of Central China’s Henan province, local government authorities said.

A bus rented by Gucheng Middle School collided with a truck at around 8:50 am Tuesday.  More than 50 students and teachers were on their way to a training campus when the bus they were on rammed into the truck, officials said.

And Shanghai Daily reports on yet another early week bus crash:

Thirty-seven pupils were injured after a school bus and a heavy truck crashed yesterday morning in Foshan City, south China’s Guangdong Province.The students were sent to hospitals for treatment and one of them was in intensive care for brain injuries[...]

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The tragedy prompted a swell of comments on the Internet and in the press calling for an overhaul of China’s badly managed and underserviced school transportation system. Rural areas in particular are known for unsafe transportation for children in aging, badly maintained vans and trucks.

The central and regional governments would provide funds for closer monitoring of manufacturing, renovation and allocation of school buses, Wen said at a conference on women’s and children’s affairs in Beijing, the Chinese government said on its official website.

Authorities would also work to improve management of bus systems and boost safety, Wen said.

Wen’s commented about the recent crash at National Working Conference on Women and Children where he addressed issues regarding the development of rights involving women and children. Xinhua adds:

The party and the government have always attached great importance to women’s and children’s issues, the premier said, noting that China has issued specific laws to protect women’s and children’s rights, while specific organizations have been set up to carry out government plans regarding the development of women’s and children’s rights.

He pledged to oppose gender discrimination of any kind and to work hard to ensure that women will have equal footing when participating in economic, political, cultural and social development.

Wen added that the government will continue to crack down on human trafficking and other crimes that target women and children.

See also: Death Toll Hits 20 in Gansu Bus Crash and Chinese Women and Work: The Sky’s the Limit  via CDT.

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The accident happened around 9:40 a.m. in Yulinzi township of Zhengning county, according to a statement from the bureau. The statement said five people died at the scene, including four children and their bus driver, while 15 others, their teacher included, were confirmed dead by the afternoon.

The statement said another 44 children were injured in the accident and have been hospitalized. Twelve of the injured are in a serious condition.

The truck had a license plate from the neighboring province of Shaanxi and was carrying coal, the statement said.

The bureau has blamed overloading for the accident, stating that the bus — a van with nine seats — was carrying 64 people, most of whom were children from Yulinzi’s Little Doctor Kindergarten, a privately-run kindergarten located in the rural area

The incident comes just three weeks after a school bus in Xinjiang province collided with a van, injuring 19. Netizens responded to the news from Gansu with outrage as officials scrambled to the scene to offer support, according to Reuters:

“The nursery school can’t shirk responsibility for such serious overcrowding,” said one comment on Sina’s “Weibo” microblogging site.

Another said: “Why don’t we protect children in the same way we protect our leaders?”

Chinese authorities have tried to crack down on dangerous driving but breakneck economic growth, and rapid expansion in the number of roads and drivers, creates many menaces, especially on poorly policed rural roads.

In 2010, Chinese police officially recorded 219,521 traffic accidents that led to deaths or injuries, including 65,225 fatalities, a fall of 3.7 percent on the previous year.

While some comments were aimed at the school for putting the children in danger, an AP report in USA Today highlights online criticism of the government for not giving adequate funds to rural schools:

Chinese Twitter-like microblogs exploded in rage after Wednesday’s accident, registering more than 800,000 posts within hours of the news.

Particular ire was directed at government spending. Many made comparisons to the quality of U.S. school buses, some by attaching a photo purporting to show a Hummer smashed under the rear fender of a hardly dented school bus in Indianapolis. “Look at American school buses. … Our school buses are irresponsible when it comes to children’s lives,” ran the heading attached to many posts.

“Won’t this make the government wake up?” Zhang Zhen, an editor with the popular Dahe Bao newspaper, said on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblog service. He said the government should divert funds from public money spent on overseas travel, cars and receptions “to give middle, primary and nursery schools in poor areas more strong, decent and spacious school vehicles.”

See also previous CDT coverage of road safety in China and recent road accidents involving children, including a driver in Sichuan who ran over and killed a boy to avoid financial penalties, a child struck and killed in Shenzhen, and the tragic death of 2-year-old Yue Yue in an October hit-and-run incident in Guangdong.

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Some include:

“If you want to jump, find a higher place to jump from. Doing it this way you don’t die, you just slow down the traffic.”

“Probably they were all rushing to work, and besides, what good is getting out of the car going to do? Unless you’re a doctor or know how to do first aid.”

“If you want to die, you can’t get other people involved in it.”

To the relief of many, other posts displayed some semblance of a conscience:

“Why is everybody rushing by and nobody gets out of their car to make sure she’s OK?”

“What are you doing just reporting it to the police and not getting out to help?”

“You guys, take a look at this video bearing in mind the Guangdong incident with little Yueyue. I think that the sad thing is not the person who jumped but society itself—so many people who didn’t even stop for a moment to get out of their cars to help.”

While the cameraman called an emergency number before driving off, the incident serves as another recent example of Chinese indifference when witnessing a fellow citizen in need. After the nation erupted last month over the horrific hit-and-run death of 2-year-old Yue Yue in Foshan, AFP reported yesterday that officials in Shenzhen have begun to draft rules to protect well-intentioned rescuers from legal action. A Global Times Op-Ed on Monday discussed the need to create a Good Samaritan law and what form that law would take, and today Holly McFarland speculates in Christian Science Monitor about which precedent would work best in China:

A recent China Daily poll reveals that approximately 87 percent of Chinese citizens are unlikely to aid an elderly person who has fallen in the street because they want to avoid being blamed for the accident. “The public’s lack of a sense of trust has been made obvious by recent media stories that have looked at the hesitation people feel before they come to someone else’s aid,” Xie Jing, a communications professor at Fudan University, told the newspaper.

…

In spite of the outrage bubbling in China over society’s apparent moral decline, the majority of the population is reluctant to follow in France’s footsteps. According to one online poll, 77.7 percent of Chinese respondents disagree with the idea of establishing a “duty to rescue” law. Most claim they don’t want moral acts to be legally enforced. With restrictions on individual freedom already so tightly monitored, the Chinese appear weary to have one more government mandate imposed.

China also announced today that a non-governmental organization will award 3,000 yuan to the Uruguayan woman, widely and incorrectly reported to be an American tourist, who rescued a person from an apparent suicide attempt in Hangzhou’s West Lake last month.

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Now the debate about a law to protect prospective Samaritans has been revived. When seeking for a legal precedent, the systems in two countries, the US and France, come to mind. In the US, the Good Samaritan law varies widely from state to state. However, its general basis is that anybody aiding a person in danger, without having caused the danger, is thereby immune to any prosecution arising from that rescue.

…

France takes a markedly different approach. The French law rests on the concept of punishing someone who does not come to the aid of a person in danger, in essence a Bad Samaritan law. It’s a rare case where the law recognizes an obligation to assist, forcing anyone in the position to save someone without putting themselves in peril to do so. Anyone found to be in breach in this law is liable to criminal prosecution and faces five years in jail as well as a fine of 75,000 euros (660,000 yuan).

On paper, the French law sounds much harsher and would doubtlessly be rejected in the fiercely individualistic US. However, where the US Good Samaritan law has caused much debate and is outright rejected in many jurisdictions, the French version has become a popular and key part of the country’s legal code. When it was first drafted, there were public concerns, but over the years, the obligation to help has become second nature to the French public.

Now, which of these would be most applicable to China? Views on Weibo seem divided, with many favoring legal protection for people like Peng Yu while others clamor for punishment to be meted out to the drivers that killed Yueyue and the passers-by who left her for dead. It seems that a mixture of the two would be best. Crucially, there is little point in passing an either kind of law if the government cannot enforce it.

While outside observers have sought to explain Yue Yue’s death through an critique of capitalist and communist ideologies in China, international charity lawyer Blake Bromley cites the biblical story of the Good Samaritan to shed light on the tragedy’s true lesson. From Huffington Post:

It was not because she was poor that the rubbish collector, Chen Xianmei picked up Yueyue and carried her off the road. Similarly, the compassion demonstrated by the Good Samaritan had little to do with his class or economic status. It is not because he belonged to a class reviled by the majority of people that the Samaritan stopped to help. He helped because he saw the injured man as his neighbor. China does not need an ideological debate that focuses on issues of “class” and “capitalism.” China has already fought a revolution on those divisive issues. China needs a debate that can unite and uplift its society. Properly understood, “Who is my neighbor?” is a moral and ethical question as relevant to the inhabitants of Zhongnanhai as it is to the shoppers who passed Yueyue in the market street. It is an inquiry that transcends social standing, economic class and party affiliation. Jesus dealt with the question in relationship to the love of God. Can China explore this question in a non-religious context that reflects the reality of contemporary China? If it can, the death of Yueyue might have a profoundly beneficial influence on the whole country and help China come to an understanding of charity that is simultaneously global and Chinese.

See also an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend in light of the Yue Yue story, in which Dick Gross examines an event in the United States 30 years ago that prompted similar national introspection and studies that have emerged since about our inclinations toward altruism.

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People gathered to protest after police tried to take the bodies away, some of them smashing and flipping over three police cars and two vans, said the Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper known for investigative journalism.

One witness put the number of protestors in the thousands, but that figure could not be confirmed.

“People were angry that the police didn’t protect the scene but tried to pull the bodies away,” the witness, who declined to be named, told AFP.

She said rumours that more people had died in the accident angered the crowd, which did not disperse until early Sunday morning.

Shanghaiist posted graphic photos of the accident scene, which have appeared and triggered public outcry on microblogging service Sina Weibo. Xinhua notes that the police officer has been arrested and could receive the death penalty if convicted, though the report makes no mention of the protests.

The violence in Henan, the latest of an increasing number of “mass incidents” utilized by Chinese citizens to address various grievances, comes just days after hundreds of migrants in Zhejiang province clashed with tax collectors and police over a tax policy that has now been rescinded.

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At 11:17am yesterday, at Xixiang Village in Shenzhen’s Bao’an district, a 1 and a half-year-old young girl waskilled outside of her home after she was struck by a truck.

The child had just learned to walk and was playing in a narrow alleyway when the truck backed over her. Both the rear and front wheels of the truck rolled over the young toddler, but it was the rear wheel that delivered the fatal blow to her head. After the incident, the victim’s doorstep was soon full of people, but no one stepped forward to comfort the family.

…

What once seemed like a freak occurrence is now mentioned with stunning regularity in the news. It’s sad to say that accidents of this sort are far from being a new phenomenon, and the only thing that’s changed has been the amount of media coverage the accidents receive.

When will the madness end? We’d like to know which parents living in high-traffic areas are still willing to let infant children out of their sight. How many more kids have to die before something changes?

See also CDT coverage of another incident last week in which a driver hit a five-year old boy in Sichuan and then deliberately killed him to minimize the financial penalty.

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Zhang Shifen witnessed the accident. “I saw the truck coming, the children were walking by the side of the road, not in the street.” Zhang Shifen recalls the truck didn’t hit Xiong Maoke directly, but rather cuffed his ear. “He fell, but after being knocked over, immediately stood up again and bent over to pick up his umbrella. “

The next scene left Zhang speechless, “I saw the truck move back a little and then move forward again, Xiong Maoke became wrapped up in the wheel, and then the truck continued forward another 10 meters.” Zhang Shifen said she was standing behind the truck, and clearly saw a child under the wheels had been badly mutilated. She shouted at the driver, “What are you doing? Will you stop!” The driver stopped, got out, swore, and turned away.

He then asked, “How much should I pay?”

The incident appears to echo the words of one of the drivers who hit Yueyue: “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan.”

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Several dramatic recent incidents — including one involving a 2-year-old girl run over in the road while more than a dozen bystanders ignored her plight — have opened a searing debate in China over whether, in the race to get rich, the country might have lost its moral bearings.

[...]Hu [Xingdou, Beijing Institute of Technology professor] added: “The Chinese government has made economic development its central task, which means everything is money-centered. . . . Both the legal system and the moral system have been sacrificed to money­making.”

In the case of the toddler, the driver who first hit her said in a telephone interview with a Guangdong television station that he had been talking on his phone when the girl walked in front of his vehicle. He said he kept driving because if she were dead, it would only cost him 10,000 to 20,000 renminbi ($1,500 to $3,000), but if she were alive, he would have to pay hundreds of thousands of renminbi in medical bills.

In contrast, Kevin Libin of the National Post argues that the legacy of communist policies should take the blame:

There’s no official number for the vast swaths of humanity extinguished by Mao’s revolutionary jags The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The opacity of the closed communist state, particularly during that period, and the state’s secrecy even to this day, means we probably never will have an entirely accurate tally. But scholars putting together whatever pieces they can find have come up with death toll estimates in the neighbourhood of anywhere from 20 to 45 million “worked, starved or beaten to death” during just four years of the Great Leap Forward and another 1 to 7 million wiped out in the “mass killings” of the Cultural Revolution.

[...]Then there are the stories of the families themselves abandoning or murdering little girls in order to save their quota for a baby boy. Indeed, these little girls reportedly being abandoned as trash is one possible reason why the people of Foshan City were so apparently unperturbed at the sight of a half-dead and bleeding little Wang Yue the other day. Such things perhaps aren’t entirely novel in China: here’s a 2001 magazine article describing (and showing a photo of) the “twisted body of a dead baby girl” “lying in the gutter of a bustling main road” with blood coming out of her. Sounds chillingly familiar, doesn’t it?

[...]if there are prevailing moral attitudes in China that led to a little bleeding toddler to be run over and left to die on a bustling street, surely the blame more likely belongs not to a few recent experiments with private, for-profit enterprise, but a cold-blooded communist regime that for decades has worked hard to deliberately debase the very value of human life.

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Despite treatment from expert doctors in the past seven days and nights, Yue Yue finally died from severe injuries, said Su Lei, dean of the hospital, at a press conference held at 8:45 releasing the conditions at the hospital where Yue Yue was treated.

Yue Yue’s parents went to the hospital to see her for the last time at 3:00 Friday morning. Her mother was too grieved to deal with the little girl’s body and only her father was doing that with the help of doctors.

The incident, which generated more than 4.5 million posts on Sina Weibo this week, has stoked outrage, condemnation and intense debate across China over the reaction of bystanders to public injury. Comments continued today upon news of Yue Yue’s death. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

The death of Yue Yue was one of the most popular topics on China’s weibos — microblogging sites similar to Twitter — today as people expressed sorrow and anger over the incident.

“Farewell to little Yue Yue. There are no cars in heaven,” wrote one microblogger on Sina’s weibo.

“Yue Yue was consumed for a week by the fake kindness of netizens… All the wishes are fake and only the 18 passers-by are real. Farewell, and do not be born in China in your next life,” another weibo user wrote.

The tragedy has generated momentum for the passage of laws to punish those who refuse to help people in distress. From China Daily:

At least 10 Party and government departments and organizations in Guangdong, including the province’s commission on politics and law, the women’s federation, the academy of social sciences and the Communist Youth League, have started discussions about punishing those who refuse to help people who clearly need it.

They are also seeking feedback from the public as to whether legislation should be enacted.

Zhu Yongping, a lawyer at Datong Law Firm, said lawyers will discuss the idea next month and push for the legislation.

“Many laws, including forbidding drunken driving, in China have been passed after high-profile individual cases, and now is the right time to legislate against refusing to help people,” Zhu said on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the Economic Observer asked its staff of young Chinese translators to reflect on the indifference of the passersby and its meaning for today’s China. From one of the respondents:

I believe it is not an isolated event and it reflects deeper problems within Chinese society. It is difficult for ordinary people to live a safe and sound life. Though China’s economy is gaining strength, problems emerge concerning the quality of its growth. Rules that are supposed to guide people’s behavior are missing. For example, people breathe polluted air, eat gutter oil, drink tainted milk, buy apartments at freakishly high prices and travel in trains that may crash. People can do evil things and get away with them because rules are easily altered and the supervision system is not working.

Yesterday, TIME’s Austin Ramzy called on a century-old short story from Chinese writer Lu Xun to demonstrate issues which have haunted Chinese society long before the events of the past week:

Will Yue Yue’s case make any difference? Lu Xun, one of China’s greatest modern writers, poses a similar possibility in a short story from nearly a century ago. The 1920 piece, from his collection Call to Arms, is titled “A Small Incident,” and it describes a man who hires a rickshaw that collides with an old woman. I ‘ve posted a 1972 translation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang below the jump. It is just 700 words long, but like Yue Yue’s case it raises questions of responsibility, morality, money, liability and the hope that a sad incident will lead to change.

See also coverage of the flood of donations to Yue Yue’s family, and a Sina Weibo count opened in the name of the mother despite her not knowing how to use the site.

Sources:

- “Injured toddler shows signs of stability” from China Daily

- “Yue Yue dies from injuries” from China Daily

- “Chinese toddler dies a week after being hit by cars, ignored by passersby” from CNN

- “China’s hit-run scandal: Yue Yue dies” from The Sydney Morning Herald

- “Law mulled to make aid compulsory” from China Daily

- “Are Chinese Heartless? EO Translators on Yue Yue” from Economic Observer

- “‘A Small Incident’: Echoes of China’s Tragic Yue Yue Case from Almost a Century Ago” from TIME

- “Donations pour in for toddler in hit-and-run” from China.org

- “Yueyue’s parents: We’re not on Sina Weibo!” from the Shanghaiist

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Footage from a surveillance camera presented on local TV shows Yue Yue was walking in a hardware market in Foshan, Guangdong province, on Thursday, about 100 meters away from her home, when she was run over by a van at 5:26 pm. Three passers-by who noticed the injured girl chose to ignore her.

The girl was then run over by a light-duty truck. The riders of four electric bicycles, a tricycle and three passers-by all chose to ignore her and no one at a shop close to the scene came to her aid.

Seven minutes after she was first hit by the van, a 57-year-old rag collector noticed the girl and moved her to the curb. The woman then tried talking to the shopkeeper but received no response. She then walked into the street and a few seconds later, the girl’s mother appears and rushes away with the girl.

…

According to reports the van driver had just split up from his girlfriend and was talking on his mobile phone when he hit the girl.

“If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan,” said the driver over the phone to the media, before he gave himself up to the police.

A chilling video of a news report has appeared on Youku showing security camera footage of the entire event, and waves of comments have emerged on Chinese social media sites (translated via chinaSMACK). While netizens have unanimously condemned the driver of the van which initially struck the girl, opinion toward the bystanders has varied. Many comments refer to a 2006 case in which a resident of Nanjing, Peng Yu, helped an old woman who had fallen only to have her later accuse him of causing the injury and win her claim when a judge ruled that Peng would not have helped the woman up if he had not caused the fall. 

The “Nanjing Peng Yu” incident has produced a fear of extortion among Chinese who witness public injury, especially in recent cases involving the elderly. From a September Xinhua News report:

An eery echo is found in a more recent event that took place in Rugao, east China’s Jiangsu province on Aug 26: A bus driver went to the help of an 81-year-old woman he saw lying on the ground by the side of her overturned tricycle. She eventually told the police that he was the one that hit her. Fortunately the bus was equipped with a video camera that showed that the old woman was lying. Sales of video cameras for cars have reportedly shot up in the days since.

The same street stunt recurs—-an old person falls down, a woman who happens to be on the spot will have to think twice before springing to the rescue. Seeing a fallen oldster, to lend a hand or not, it is a question! 

In today’s China, it seems, a good deed can be compounded by extortion and even legally punished. That explains why Samaritans are thin on the ground these days in a country that enjoys time-honored fine traditions of being ready to help those in need. A recent online poll found in China that 84 percent of the polled would not offer assistance to a fallen oldster on the street for fear of extortion.

“It is not always necessary to help old people immediately after they fall down, depending on different conditions and symptoms they have shown,” according to the “timely” guidelines published early in the month by the Ministry of Health.

See also recent CDT coverage of netizens’ responses to a dramatic rescue of a swimmer in Hangzhou’s West Lake, and more on China’s “Good Samaritan problem”.

Update: While Yue Yue’s family awaits test results as their daughter remains in critical condition on Tuesday, The New York Times reports on the eruption of comments on social media and the debate surrounding the proper response of bystanders to accidents:

The story rocketed to the top of Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, over the weekend, Shanghaiist reported. Many saw in the casual disregard of those who did not help a symbol of an almost Hobbesian state of struggle, while others argued that Good Samaritans have been punished in the past for intervening in such episodes.

“This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn’t be treated so heartlessly,” one person posted to Sina Weibo, Agence-France Presse reported.

Another poster, named Johnny Yao and quoted by The Daily Telegraph, writes: “Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying? This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China, are we even rescuable?”

The China Media Project notes that traditional media have also chimed in:

One of the lengthiest reports comes from the official, but also very commercial, Guangzhou Daily. The report quotes a number of experts, including Fudan University sociologist Gu Xiaoming (顾晓明), who said that people had lost their “reverence for life” and felt “indifferent or even cold about life or death” owing to the new complexities of Chinese social life. Faced with a situation like Xiao Yueyue’s, Gu said, many people will not know what to do: “People will rationalize [the situation] and think, if I try to save her but she dies because I can’t, how will that make me responsible?”

Chen Xianmei (陈贤妹), the woman who eventually did come to Xiao Yueyue’s aid, told Guangzhou Daily that she asked four or five people who has stalls along the street whether they knew whose child this was. She says they all said, “It’s not mine,” and no one offered any help. She then shouted in all directions, she says, asking for help or information, and only then did the child’s mother come running.

At People’s Daily Online today, columnist Li Hongbing (李泓冰) writes: “Any one of us might become the ‘passerby’ at the side of Xiao Yueyue. Please, stop. Move her out of the center of the road. Or extend a hand of comfort, carrying her away from danger.”

The China Daily ran a timely story today of a 15-year old under arrest in Wuhan for harming a woman he claims he was simply helping up after she was struck by an electric car.

Sources:

- “Hospital offers little hope for girl’s survival” from China Daily

- “2-Year-Old Girl Ran Over By Van & Ignored by 18 Bystanders” from chinaSMACK

- “‘Good people and good deeds’ should never be tarnished” from Xinhua News

- “Mother testifies to good character of rescuer” from China Daily

- “Chinese Debate Aiding Strangers After Toddler’s Critical Injury” from the New York Times

- “Would you lift a hand to help?” from the China Media Project

- “Teen accused of hurting woman” from China Daily

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: altruism, extortion, netizens, online public opinion, road accidents, road safety
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Xinhua cited a Tianjin traffic official as saying the bus was speeding and that many passengers were thrown out of the vehicle when it hit the car and rolled over.

In eastern Anhui province, at least 10 people died and 19 were injured in a 24-vehicle pileup on an expressway as foggy weather reduced visibility, the Beijing News daily said.

Eleven people in a van were killed after a truck crashed into the vehicle in central Henan province, the newspaper said.

Serious traffic accidents are common in China due to often overloaded vehicles and poorly trained drivers who often ignore traffic laws.

Overcrowding also contributed to the deaths of 41 people in a Henan bus fire in July. Operators frequently take on extra passengers outside official stops and stations in order to expand thin profit margins, but this can lead to overloading and bypassed safety checks.

The holiday also saw Chinese railway police catch 1,777 ticket scalpers around the country, according to Xinhua.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, National Day, public transportation, railways, road accidents, road safety, traffic accidents
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